


The Winter Zombie

by verityshu



Series: The Winter Zombie [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Bruce Is a Good Bro, Fluff and Angst, Friendship/Love, Love at First Sight, M/M, Mild Gore, Minor Character Death Mentioned, Minor Clint Barton/Phil Coulson, Mysterious Past, Protective Natasha, Tony Stark Has Issues, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-01
Updated: 2014-12-08
Packaged: 2018-02-11 08:30:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 41,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2061150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verityshu/pseuds/verityshu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky is a highly unusual former living person who first rescues and then falls in love with Steve. The course of true and undead love never did run smooth. </p><p>Featuring ZombieBucky and HumanSteve. Yes, very loosely based on the movie 'Warm Bodies'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired after watching 'Warm Bodies' and reading the book. I started to think what if Bucky is R and Steve is his Julie...the plot won't follow the film and book completely, there will be deviations.
> 
> Update: Finally got around to writing a short follow-up story, yay! [ Till human voices wake us ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7156994)

The good thing about being dead is no one bothers him and it suits B just fine like that.

Most of the time, the dead ignore each other to lurch around in a bewildered state. They don’t attract one another for reasons unknown and nobody dead or alive really cares enough to find out why that is. The only time when a seemingly passive deadie turns into a dangerously focused and voracious predator in mere seconds is when they catch sight or scent of a breather.

As for breathers, they usually just take off like a jackrabbit at their first sight of a deadie unless they want to be reduced to a mound of stringy meat on bones.

He doesn’t mind being not alive anymore and he’s okay with this new second life, or rather, un-life. It’s quiet and peaceful, and he’s left pretty much alone. He’s fairly content with the way things are now. And he would be completely happy if it wasn’t for one awkward, recurring predicament.

One day, Nat comes in to his little vault and grumbles, "hun..gry."

He thinks it over and realizes it’s been a few weeks since he’s eaten so he nods in assent. And they leave together, in companionable silence, to hunt.

Sure, the need to feed does get a little problematic at times and it means he has to leave his room and join the rest of the swaying, moaning masses on the streets, but all in all, B guesses it could have been worse. He could have been one of those deadies with legs and hands rotted right off, unable to move from the spot where they fell, reduced to just a starving torso attached to a head, snapping gums, teeth and rolling eyes. So yes, it could be much worse.

Once they hit the heart of the city, the stench grows ever stronger. It’s unbelievable, one can almost see a noxious cloud hanging low over the buildings, and he’s glad his olfactory senses are dulled or he’s sure he would be retching continuously until he’s a dry husk.

Catching sight of himself as he passes a dirty window but clear enough to reflect, he stops to take a look, curious. An inspection shows his limbs are still where they’re suppose to be, including one arm which he can’t recall how it got there in the first place. It’s not like the rest of him, it’s not meat and it’s hard and unyielding and heavy. There’s a shape on it, with pointy edges. He had tried biting it off but couldn’t get his mouth all the way around so he left it in the end. Unlike most of the dead around him, he’s not decomposing with worms like ripe fruit left out on a hot day. He doesn’t think he smells too bad ether. At most, maybe he is just a little stale, due to the same clothes he’s been wearing for months now.

Except for a paleness, bordering on pallid, and crisscrossing light blue-veins patterning across skin, he supposes he still looks alright. Not too deceased. His eyes are almost normal, if for a ring of black around his pupils, and they’re not filmed over with milky cataracts like the others. As a matter of fact, he almost could pass for a living breather. He touches his hair, it’s a bit long, but otherwise it has stopped growing beyond the present length, just like his nails.

Nat nudges him impatiently so he tears himself away from the reflection.

Among all the dead he has seen so far, Nat is the most like him. He doesn’t know why they are the way they are, they just are. Just like he doesn’t know why she was the first deadie he saw when he opened his eyes, red hair hanging over her face as she peered down on him.

“Nat..your..name.” She had pointed at her face, pale and faintly blue-veined like his, but still whole and undamaged, and then jabbed the finger at him. It took a long while for him to grasp she was asking for his name.

“Bu..ee..” It was all he could articulate out, his mouth had felt like it was stuffed full of cotton, tongue leaden and weighted down. And he couldn’t recall his name except he was quite certain it began with the letter B...or was it J? But B was the first thing he said so B he was to Nat.

It was Nat who taught him how the world works now, the risen dead versus breathers. As it stands, it seems the dead were winning with a vengeance. There’s just too many of them flooding the city, in varying stages of decomposition and disintegration, crowding the pavements, buildings and the sidewalks.

Lifeless and yet malignantly alive in some mysterious way, continuously infecting those they haven’t consumed clean through bites, and they’re so very, very hungry. The breathers didn’t stand a chance when animated dead bodies started walking. Even at the last moment, humans just didn’t want to believe their own kids or the sweet grey-haired grandmother next door who used to bake them chocolate chip cookies was going to take a big chunk out of any of their soft body parts they could get at with their teeth.

In his more philosophical moments, he wonders what happened to make it the way it is now. Why no one who died is staying dead. And if it’s the same everywhere else. Nat doesn’t know or she’s not saying or she can’t give a fuck.

He’s aware Nat and him aren’t quite the same as the others. Besides not moldering into a runny, putrid, shambling mess as time passes, they still somehow retain a core of self and the ability to communicate, although it’s done through drawn out monosyllables. Even without memories intact of their former breather lives, they could still reason and deliberate. Just, it felt like he was grasping his hands through smoke sometimes. The rest of dead could only moan mindlessly. He had tried talking to some of the less decayed-looking ones with jaws still intact but was usually met with blank stares from lidless eyes.

The only time the sighing would stop and transformed into a thrumming sense of palpable, greedy eagerness was when a breather was spotted and the delightful whiff of fresh blood pumping through someone not dead could be sensed.

In a tidal wave, the deadies would converge towards the unfortunate and even with guns or any other weapons to fight back, it was a matter of time before the breather or breathers were overwhelmed and the feasting would begin.

Maybe that’s why the living, warm and breathing, excited the dead so much. They’re a reminder of what they themselves once had been and some tiny part of them must want to be that way again.

Nat thinks his theory is a load of sentimental bullshit. Still, sometimes, he would catch a glimpse of almost wistful melancholy in her face, when she plunges her hands into a quivering stomach, ripping in to tear steaming guts out into her avid, waiting mouth. But then, he could be wrong.

As they amble down a street, a breather with metal wings flies over their heads, causing a powerful wind to sweep through the moaning masses and any loosely attached appendages to detach in the force of its wake.

Well, that’s something one doesn’t see every day.

Nat has already taken off in the same direction as the flying human. He breaks into a run as well but he’s not as fast, his bulk is heavier than hers, and while he effortlessly outpaces the rest of his undead cohorts, he can’t catch up and it’s not long before he loses sight of her.

He’s passing by an alleyway when the most incredible scent comes wafting out. It stops him literally dead in his tracks and he instinctively swivels down the way in search.

The scent grows stronger as he approaches deeper but with it, comes the familiar reek of rotting bodies.

There is a breather fighting ferociously against a crowd of deadies. And he stops and stares.

The breather, a tall male of the species, is easily the most beautiful thing B has seen since he died. He watches as the human punches, kicks and drives them at bay from the second breather cowering behind him. His every movement is agile, powerful and almost inhumanly fast. He’s carrying a round, shiny thing painted in blue and white circles which he’s using alternatively to protect himself from bites and grasping hands and as a weapon to slice through the ranks of the dead trying to overpower him.

But it’s the shape in the middle of the round thing that surprises him. He’s seen it before; the same outline is etched on his arm too.

As the blonde human slices the head off the last deadie with the round object, a roar sounds above his head. He looks up to see the flying one swooping down to land on his feet and then they’re both talking. He concentrates to try and make sense of what they’re saying.

"We’ve got a survivor, take her out of here." The crying (and utterly useless throughout the whole battle) breather is pushed into the flying one’s arms.

"Damn if I'm leaving you behind! Steve, there’s more of them heading this way. A hell lot more."

Steve. He likes the sound of this name.

"You can’t carry both of us and still fly. Just go, Sam. I can handle this."

The dark-skinned breather with the wings looks angry and unwilling but he does as he’s told and lifts off with the survivor into the sky.

Steve watches them leave before collapsing to his knees, head hanging down, breaths coming out harshly, still holding on to the shiny circular thing, among a pile of torn limbs and bodies.

It won’t be long, he already can hear the very bad sound of a multitude of feet, moving in tandem, accompanied by rising, agitated groans and moans. It’s the sure sign that a horde is building relentlessly, gathering more dead in its path as it surges along and it’s almost upon them. No matter how good Steve is he can’t possibly win against thousands of them, all with the single-minded aim to rend, tear apart and feed.

He knows this with abrupt clarity. He doesn’t want Steve to be eaten. He doesn’t want to eat Steve either, even though he smells heavenly. And that’s something new for him. Prey and yet, not prey. Protect instead.

He makes a decision and slowly shuffles himself forward, as non-threateningly as possible. The human looks up and his eyes are blue, and they narrow in suspicion at the sight of him. Before he can say anything, the round thing is being flung at him and his arm automatically reaches out and catches hold of the spinning edge with an audible clang.

Oh, he didn’t know he could do that.

Those blue eyes widen in wary surprise.

He crouches directly in front of the human who makes no further move to attack and searches his mind for the appropriate words to speak.

"Help..you." He hopes he will be understood. His pronunciation comes out as drawn out mutters but it’s the best he can do. "Horde..is..coming."

Dipping his hand into the stomach of the nearest deadie and rummaging among slippery entrails, he then smears as much of the gloopy residue he can gather onto Steve’s shirt and watches him grimace with revulsion.

"What are you—?" He ignores the protests and smears more on one smooth cheek, using his fingers. "Hey, stop that!"

He prevents him from wiping it off, grasping the wrist. The brief contact has him wondering at the hotness emanating off the human breather. He’s so warm. Not even the sun can offer his body any form of heat now but this Steve, with a mere touch, did.

"Ste..eve..keep..you..safe."

He is aware he’s being looked upon strangely. "How do you know my name? And why can you talk? You’re a zombie, aren’t you? The dead has lost the capability for cognitive thinking and speech, we’ve established that fact."

"Come..on." He tugs at Steve’s arm insistently, there’s no time to answer his questions. The horde is here, he can see the first few trickling into the alleyway, attracted by the noise caused by the flying one and Steve’s own smell which is, thankfully, masked under the acid rankness of a deadie now.

"Be..dead."

Steve gives him an incredulous stare. "You want me to pretend to be one? That’s just plain crazy."

"Have..to." He passes the round object over and the human takes it to hang it away on his back in a swift motion.

Steve’s opening his mouth to say something further but stops as he hears it too, the intensifying resonance of a thousand mouths sighing, groaning together.

Still with that disbelieving and skeptical expression, he straightens his arms until they’re stiffly perpendicular in front of his chest, fingers reaching out. Without bending his knees, he takes a rigid step forward and then another. A gruesomely pained noise issues forth from between his lips and B is afraid he’s been damaged until he understands the human is trying to moan like deadies do.

Steve seems to notice his reaction except he doesn’t think he has any left actually, not in his undead state anyway. But he must see something because he is asking.

"Not good?" he is saying uncertainly and B realizes, with a little fluttery fluster (his heart doesn’t beat anymore, does it?), that the face before him is wonderfully easy to read as Steve is obviously thinking over why he’s asking a deadie on how to be a deadie.

"Too..much." He demonstrates, letting his arms go slack at his side, tilting his head to one side and adopting a loose, shuffling gait.

"Right." Steve imitates him awkwardly and B thinks this is the best they can do in such a short amount of time. Bending over slightly, he reaches into another open cavity on a still twitching torso and bringing out a squashed looking kidney, he liberally rubs it over Steve’s arms and more onto on his shirt.

"Please, really, you can stop doing that."

Tossing the organ aside and just in time, the horde is upon them. Pouring into the narrow alleyway, the first wave has a focused gaze in their milky, colorless eyes, sniffing the air avidly, which changes into one of perplexity when Steve’s scent is nowhere to be found.

B takes hold of Steve’s sleeve and points discreetly. The human nods in understanding.

Slowly, painfully slowly, they inch their way around the standing dead, as the space becomes more tightly enclosed. He knows they have to get out now before the entrance gets bottle-necked and the whole area traps them in and Steve will not be safe even with smeared guts on him.

Keeping Steve safe has become the overriding impulse firing previously dormant brain synapses.

When they make it into the wide street, Steve pales a little at the sight of the horde around them. There has to be at least a thousand or more gathering at the mouth of the alleyway, fanning and spilling out, hands waving frenziedly as each tried to climb over the other in their haste.

He reaches and grasps Steve’s left elbow, and some long-forgotten instinct makes him pat the arm. It’s a gesture of reassurance among breathers, he seems to recall.

"Don’t..worry. Safe..with..me," he breathes softly. A deadie swaying close by suddenly snaps to rigid attention and his half-chewed neck cranes desperately to find the speaker. He shuts his mouth quickly but gives a last gentle squeeze to the arm, and marvels anew at the heat the human is sending out. So deliciously warm and it makes him want to wrap himself around the source and press in completely until they meld into one indistinguishable organism comprising of dead and living flesh.

Steve smiles at him, just from the corner of his mouth as he's trying hard not to break character, but it’s a nice smile all the same. And it makes B's heart go…he distinctly feels it make another of that little fluttery thump again.

A thing that has been lifeless and shriveled for so long can’t possibly be beating again, can it? he asks himself doubtfully.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The scene in the movie where R tells Julie to act dead is one of my favorites so I couldn't resist putting it in too.
> 
> Next - Steve gets to know B a little better.


	2. Chapter 2

He takes Steve back to his room because it’s not far and it's the most protected place remaining in the city from the dead. Throughout the journey, the human had to pretend to be a deadie and he honestly wasn't too good at it. The stink of rot clinging to him helped to cover his natural breather scent from the horde around them and they made it without any trouble.

Entering his sanctuary, Steve looks around and observes, “You stay here? It’s a vault.”

“Ho..me.” It’s not really a home to him but it’s the closest he can describe about the place to another. He knows what it is, the function of a bank and a vault, but it’s the first place he had woken up in after dying. If anything, it’s familiar.

“I didn’t mean to make it sound like it’s something bad,” Steve says apologetically, accompanied by another smile. The human’s easy expressiveness still makes B feel strange, not quite so…lifeless. In response, he does a little shrugging motion with his shoulders.

“I don’t..mind,” he replies and shuts the vault door behind him although it’s not really necessary. The building which the vault is contained is secure from any deadies, he has made sure of it. “Safe..here.”

“I haven’t thank you for getting me out of a tight spot, back there. Um, thanks.” Steve is standing awkwardly in front of him, the stance at odds with the grace and power he had shown as a fighter in the alleyway. “I’m Steve. Steve Rogers. But you know that already.” He sticks his hand out, palm open.

There’s something he should do to reciprocate the action, only he can’t remember what it is. He lifts his own hand, uncertain what to do next.

Steve closes the distance between their palms and presses them tightly, fingers enfolding over his. If his flesh is cold to the touch, there's no indication of it by the human. They’re almost the same height, Steve is a little taller, and there’s no ridicule or mocking in those blue eyes that he can detect, just warmth and genuine interest.

‘The name’s..B.”

“Bee?”

“No..just B.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance.” Steve pumps their joined hands up down, twice, firmly before letting go. His expression turns thoughtful. “Not that I’m not grateful but I have to ask, why did you save me?”

He feels like scuffing his feet at the blunt question. Can he admit it's because he had thought Steve beautiful when fighting? That Steve somehow has the ability to make him want to wrap him up in blankets and tuck him safe somewhere, away from all possible injuries and harm that would cause him to die and not revive. It sounds vaguely creepy, even for a dead guy like him.

“So did you bring me here to kill me, then store my body away, sort of like preserved meat for the winter?”

A tiny tremor of shock runs through him at the suggestion. Does Steve really think he will do that? “Not..kill..ing..you.”

“I was just joshing with you.” Steve’s warm smile broadens. “I don’t know who you are, why you’re here, but my gut instinct tells you’re one of the good guys.” B winces a little at the mention of guts. “And you’re different. You’re not like the rest of the dead. Do you know why you’re like this?”

“Don’t..know. No..mem..ories left..of previous..ly.”

“Anyway, I smell like a butcher’s shop or worse.” Steve sniffs one shirt sleeve and wrinkles his nose. “You wouldn’t happen to have a spare lying around, would you?”

“Yes.” He does happen to actually. Nat has a practice of passing clothes to him after one of her solo forages to feed, nagging at him to change out of his habitual black t-shirt and hoodie. But they're comfortable and feels nice against his skin, like his worn jeans, and they still smell okay.

He walks over to one of the many box openings on the wall and rummages inside, among a tightly wadded pile made up of what Nat brought him periodically. Pulling out a crumpled grey t-shirt, he shakes it out considerately and it does look big enough to fit even a pair of broad shoulders. It is then he notices there’s something painted on the front. It’s an exact match to the object Steve had used to fight off the deadies.

“It’s a symbol. In case you’re wondering. It’s on my shield.”

“Sy..mbol..of you?”

“Kinda.” Steve’s cheeks turn a self-conscious shade of red; it’s a blush. B finds himself fascinated by the sudden tiny capillaries, flushing with blood, patterning the epidermis. Almost like his, except his are pale cobalt blues.

“It’s meant more as a representation. It’s supposed to stand for Captain America. That’s me too. Before the zombi…before all this happened. I was, still am, a part of the Avengers. Captain America’s my codename. It sounds corny, I know, but I’m still proud and honored I can carry the title.”

“Aven..gers?” It’s an intriguing term and he briefly speculates what they do. How does one go about avenging?

“We’re a team. We’re, well, some call us superheros. Or government spies. Freaks popular too.” The tone turns wry. “Depending on the day and the people doing the calling. We just try to help those who need it. Especially in times like this. We enter the city when we manage to receive a distress signal. Or we sometimes just do runs, like today. To find survivors if any, extract them outside to the safe zone.”

“Before..we..I..eat them.”

Steve bites his lip. “Yeah. We would like to prevent that from happening.” He didn’t deny it and B is peculiarly pleased he didn’t try to gloss over the truth that the dead eat the living to spare his feelings.

“Same..shape.” He does decide to change the subject instead since it is making the human uncomfortable. Devouring breathers to survive is a fact of his existence. It’s not personal, like how a lion requires meat to continue to be, or how breathers enjoy eating the flesh of animals. The only change is breathers are no longer on the top of the food chain while deadies like their meat uncooked and sometimes still squirming.

He turns slightly and points to the outline on his arm, showing it to Steve.

“I saw. It’s like mine and they’re stars by the way.” The human seems curious. “Your arm…it’s not the same too. Not even for a living person.”

“Me..tal. Not..flesh.”

Steve hovers his fingers over the arm, not touching, asking for consent to do so. “Okay?” and B nods.

The soft press of fingertips lightly exploring his metal arm, the ridges between the plates, brings a different set of sensations from any of his previous contacts with the human. It feels like tiny, raw electric currents are rippling through the entire appendage. It’s not painful but he flinches a little when a thumb rubs over the star.

Seeing him shy away, Steve draws back hurriedly, snatching his hand off. “Did it hurt?” he says, red-faced again, “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“It’s..okay.” He belatedly realizes he’s still clutching the t-shirt with a fist so he holds it out, indicating for the human to take it.

“Ah, thanks. Could you hang on to it for a second, I need to—” Steve unstraps his shield from behind his back and lays it on the floor. He starts unbuttoning his stained shirt and shucks it off as B stares.

A baffling heat floods his own cheeks this time; is his head exploding? No, is he…blushing? Like what Steve has done a moment ago. Except he can’t visualize what he must look like blushing since he’s sure his blood isn’t pure scarlet anymore. Raised bluish veins instead, maybe.

He averts his face, hoping the human has not noticed his nervousness. Yet, a part of him is amazed over how there are no perceptible scars scraped and imprinted on that expanse of smooth, pale skin revealed. Steve is unblemished, unlike him.

The shirt is taken from his hand and when he glances back once more, Steve’s upper body and arms is now properly covered. He’s not sure if he’s relieved or sorry. The symbol emblazoned on the t-shirt is a little stretched against the chest, otherwise, it does fit.

Steve is holding his old shirt, looking for somewhere to dispose of it, so B takes pity and helps him stuff it into another box opening and closing the little door to prevent the smell from escaping.

“So you mind if I take a look around the place? There’s something I’ll like to check out, if it’s fine by you.”

He nods his head for a second time. There’s nothing much in the vault, it’s practically bare. There are lights shining from the florescent bulbs above so it’s not in complete darkness even without windows. Air must come from hidden vents since Steve is still breathing. It seems to be a very ordinary vault to him.

Steve is crouching at something placed in the middle of the room, his brow furrowed. “This shouldn’t be here. B?”

B looks. Bizarrely, now that the object has been pointed out and made known to him, he notices, and really notices. His eyes captures the thing, the image is transmitted to his brain, and he identifies there is a black chair bolted to the middle of the vault floor.

Has the chair always been there all along? He anxiously thinks over all the days he’s been inside the vault. The chair has literally been invisible to him, why hasn’t he perceived it had been there?

Little unpleasant pinpricks are beginning to stab under the membrane of his eyelids, infinitesimally sharp needles that poke poke poke at him, as Steve examines the strange black chair closely. He experiences a desire, strong and thick, to drag and throw the human away from it. The chair is not safe.

“Chairs fastened to the floor aren’t usually part of a vault. And they don’t come attached to computers. Or this.” He gestures to a stand with a curved semi-circle thing attach to the top, looming behind the chair. “Normal chairs don’t come with straps meant to restrain a person.”

He stops his examination and the furrow is still there on his brow. He throws a troubled squint at B’s direction.

“Did you wake up here?”

“Yes.”

“You have lights and the air isn’t going bad so there must still be a generator working somewhere, powering electricity and filtered vents. Maybe some of these computers are still working. I can try to find the switch that activates them and take a look what’s inside. Tony, he’s one of the Avengers, he’s been teaching me about computers before the dead started walking. I think I have a good enough foundation by now to access the files once I’m in. This could be the reason why you’re, you know, different. We could find out why you’re the way you—”

“NO!”

The lingering echoes of the shout reverberate around them, shocking even himself. His throat constricts as the word leaves his mouth and his fingers spasm around empty air.

“What’s wrong?” Steve only looks dismayed and concerned and B wants to say he’s not angry, not at him, but he really needs him to stop speaking about the damn chair.

The vault door bursts open before he could articulate his want and Nat hurls in, baring her teeth, lips peel back in a snarl.

She flings herself at the human who manages at the very last second to block her with his shield.

Nat is pummeling against the shield with her fists and Steve is holding against the onslaught, legs planted against the floor with his heels. He’s straining since Nat is strong even for a deadie. She growls and changes her tactic by grabbing the sides of the shield and literally lifting the human off his feet for a few inches and it’s enough as she flings him to the side.

Steve recovers his balance immediately, falling onto one knee while a hand scrapes against the floor, stopping his momentum. Without hesitation, he gauges the distance between and the shield is flying through the air with the precise amount of power behind the throw. It hits Nat’s stomach dead-on. She staggers, uttering a grunt but manages to remain standing on her feet. The shield somehow does a trajectory, a boomerang effect, to whirr back to Steve who catches it firmly.

Nat comes at him again except B is in her way this time, resolutely blocking her path. Nat is his friend but he can’t let her hurt Steve.

It works. She stops and glares at him before gesturing towards the offender, still in a defensive position, shield up in front of him.

She spits out, “Brea..ther! Kill, tear, eat.”

He shakes his head insistently, trying to make her listen. There is a hate on his friend’s features that goes beyond simple hunger to feed.

“She’s..a..com..rade.” He half turns to Steve, still holding Nat at bay, and explains. Steve nods his understanding. He drops his shield onto the floor, holding his hands up to indicate he is unarmed.

Nat lays a palm flat on his shoulder and gives him a furious shove. “You..crazy? Bring..ing a brea..ther back. Horde..still hun..ting. For.. _him_.”

“Had..to. No..where..safe.”

“Why!?”

“Ste..eve is..different. Not like..them,” he insists.

“Can’t trust..brea..thers. Hurt us..before. Hurt _you_.”

Mystified, he shrugs at her vehemence. Nat jabs at the black chair with an accusing finger. “With..this!”

It shakes him to his core at her revelation. Nat remembers something about his past, has knowledge of him when he had been a breather. It wasn’t a coincidence or an accident of fate that she found him inside the vault. Despite his misgivings and fear about it, the chair is instrumental to his past life.

“Tell..me,” he pleads but she only shakes her head irritably, refusing to divulge anything else further.

Seeing the conflict going on between the two friends before him, Steve discreetly clears his throat. “Ma’am, I can assure you I don’t intend any harm to anyone here.”

“Your kind..exter..minates..our kind.” Nat sneers.

B stays quiet because she speaks the truth. Only hours ago, when he found Steve, he was fighting deadies, practically tearing them apart.

“And I don’t disagree with you. I have no idea why this is happening but I have a responsibility to protect, to look after those who aren’t able to do it themselves. There are still many people left behind in this city because the walls to keep you in won’t let them out. They’re not to blame for the way the world is now and they don't deserve to be food for you and the rest. And I’m not a saint. I have no choice but to defend myself if I’m being attacked.”

Nat becomes quiet momentarily when he ends. Then she raises a middle finger. “Fuck..off boy..scout.”

B is scandalized and he tries to grab the finger to push it back down. She staunchly flips it straight and proud despite his best efforts.

There’s silence from Steve’s end and B hopes his feelings aren’t too badly wounded. He’s about to apologize on behalf when he sees the human bending over slightly, as if in pain. This is not good, he thinks direly.

Steve’s mouth opens and he laughs. A great, belly-aching laugh escapes him and he snorts until tears leak out of his eyes and he’s almost gasping for breaths while Nat and B are now both staring at him.

“So…rry, sorry…just let me…catch my…wind.” In his hilarity, Steve is stuttering like they do, his words coming out in breathless hitches. There’s something wonderful and so simple about whatever the human is finding funny and a facial tic pushes his lips up and it’s not a tic, he’s smiling a little. Smiling at Steve, smiling with him.

Nat looks disquieted and disgruntled.

When Steve regains his equilibrium, the laughter finally fading away, he says, “Really am sorry, ma’am. I wasn’t laughing at you, was laughing at myself. Just recollecting something someone said to me. I have a comrade too and he can be a right pain in the ass. He doesn't pull his punches in a fight either and he said to me once, I quote his exact words, ‘ _Rogers, you can be a sanctimonious, pompous and holier-than-thou dickhead._ ’ And he’s right. I figure I do tend to fall in love with my speechifying sometimes. I didn’t mean to put you down with what I said earlier.”

“The dead eat us and we try to stop them from eating or turning the rest of us into extinction by destroying them. That’s what’s happening right now.”

He turns serious, his whole demeanour unwavering as he tells Nat. “I can promise you I will never hurt B. He saved me, I owe him. And it’s not just that. He’s important—”

B’s dead heart gives another one of those little flusters. Stop doing that, he tells the shrunken body part inside his chest, for fuck’s sake.

“—could be a vital key to solving this war between us.”

Oh. He feels himself deflating a little.

Nat is looking at him from the corner of her eyes, distinctly communicating the message ‘what the hell is wrong with you’.

He doesn’t know either. He has gone from feeling almost nothing on a daily basis to having a battery of new emotions and sensations descending upon him in a single day. All because of one Steve Rogers of the Avengers.

The anger isn’t completely gone from Nat but at least the outright antagonism has been replaced by irritation and displeasure, and she’s not trying to eat Steve at least. B thinks it’s hard to stay mad at someone who’s so obviously determined not get riled up, no matter what is said or done against him. Those blue eyes might have helped too; they’re very earnest and guileless.

“Nat?” He ventures to ask when she directs her gaze from him and to Steve with narrowed, speculative eyes.

She mimics a very human gesture, letting out an exasperated sigh, even though she doesn’t have air in her lungs technically. “Keep,” she points to Steve, “him in..side. Horde..takes..time..to scatter.”

Turning to go, she pauses but doesn’t turn back completely. A sour tartness creeps into her voice, even with the broken up speech, as she leaves a parting shot.

“Get..him..food. Water. They..die..eas..ily.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the lovely comments in the first chapter! I'm still figuring out how many chapters this will take, that will be updated soon. In the meantime, there's still lots to write. More about B's world, his connection with Steve, the Avengers appearing...


	3. Chapter 3

It’s harder than he expects to find food which is suitable for Steve’s consumption. Any perishables have already long been rendered putrid slop by now and whatever nearby places he enters to forage is mostly empty. Metal shelves sits bare in the dimness of broken florescent lights with the odd deadie or so shambling aimlessly among the aisles. 

Remaining breathers had probably cleaned out as much food or water they could get their hands on, hoping to sit out in their homes until rescue arrived. He remembers when there was a lot more of them around in the early days, when the dead were still rising, biting, spreading their contamination much slower. Only the soldiers deployed were ultimately overwhelmed by the growing numbers and retreated behind the barriers they proceeded to build to try and contain in the epidemic. 

After searching a few shops, and he doesn’t want to explore too far away, he manages to gather a number of tinned food. Locating drinkable water proves to be more challenging. Not even a trickle comes out from the taps that he tries. 

He unexpectedly hits the jackpot in the last place he looks. Rolled in a dark, dusty corner, are several plastic bottles of water left undetected by those who had looted the store previously. He gathers all of them into a canvas bag and wanders over to another section to get a tin opener along with a cutlery set. Steve doesn’t seem like somebody who would eat using his hands.

He wanted to join him outside but B had to remind him it’s still not safe. The horde caused by his presence earlier was still going strong. Like Nat said, it would take a few days for them to gradually lose interest and start to disperse back into individual, mindless entities again. 

As it is, he notices sparks of awareness turned at him as he passes by several deadies meandering on the streets. This phenomena is already disturbing by itself since his kind don’t pay attention to each other because decomposing meat is not a viable food source for them. The baffled interest being shown towards him is a duller version of them being roused to full zombie mode when a breather is detected. 

And it isn’t his imagination when he walks close to a dead, still relatively whole except for a gaping eye socket and peeling patches of skin, and she swings her head towards him, nostrils flaring. 

She comes at him, mouth slavering, and he’s forced to punch the side of her neck using his metal arm although he doesn’t use his full strength. The neck still breaks in spite of his effort to pull back and she stumbles, head slanted at a twisted angle. She sniffs the air cautiously before lumbering away to a safer distance. 

This little altercation in turn draws even more attention to him from the surrounding deadies, their filmed over eyes scrutinizing him with something close to distrust, and he stares back briefly before walking off. He takes a longer detour back to the vault, just in case.

They can smell Steve on him, he realizes. That’s not good at all.

Returning, he stands at the door and a long-forgotten instinct makes him bang on the surface before pushing it inwards. He stops cold at the sight before him.

Steve is perched on the edge of the black chair, looking intently at a computer screen hanging next to it. “Welcome back,” he waves without looking up.

“What..are you..doing?”

“Managed to get this one running, it booted up okay. The rest are beyond my know-how to fix.” He taps on the screen and something that looks like a body bio scan and some words flashes on for three seconds before going dead again. “Damnit, was close that time.”

He’s still standing there, unmoving, trying not to look at the chair or at Steve sitting on it.

Steve catches on to the unnatural silence and glances towards his direction. At B’s fixed state, his concern resurfaces. “B, I know you did say it’s alright for me to take a look but if you really don’t want me to, you gotta say so. I give you my word I won’t continue on if it makes you uncomfortable.”

He shakes his head dumbly. Steve has explained he believes the key to unlocking his earlier breather life is tied to the chair and he instinctively knows it to be true. His visceral reactions to the chair already proves a part of him still retains a fuzzy awareness the thing is somehow intertwined with what he is. The fact he had deliberately deleted its existence from his mind before just confirms this suspicion. 

While he agreed to let Steve try and find any information he could from it doesn’t mean he has to like its presence. 

“No. It’s..fine. Go..ahead.” 

Steve looks unconvinced but lets the subject go. He slides off the chair and B can feel the coiled tension releasing and flowing out of him. 

“I’ll have a look at it later.”

“Found..some food. Not much..varie..ty.” 

“Whatever’s good.” 

When he sets the bag down, he sees there’s a heap of blankets and pillows piled on the floor. He’s not sure how they got there. They weren’t there when he left.

“Found them upstairs. I figure since this is still a bank, strange as it is, there must be offices above. Nothing much left upstairs except more busted computers. I got these throws and cushions from the employees’ lounge. Didn’t notice anything like a bed here so I brought a bunch of them down. Have you been sleeping on the floor?”

“Don’t..sleep.” The little bubble of panic threatens to rise up at the thought of Steve leaving the vault by himself, exposed and defenseless. And he squashes it ruthlessly. The building is fortified against intruders, all the entrances and exits blocked, and Steve can fight. But Steve is precious and the sentiment of protectiveness towards him won’t go away. 

“So what do you do if you don’t sleep?”

“Brain..switches off. Empty..but still con..scious.”

“That sounds almost like a kind of suspended trance state. Is it the same for the rest of the dead?”

“They..stay awake..until..they putrefy.”

He sets the bag down on the floor, next to the blanket pile, and the tins clatter against each other. Together, they rummage inside the contents and Steve exclaims with some incredulity as he holds up a can for B to see. 

“I can’t believe spam’s still around in this time. I used to love this stuff when I was a kid but I got plenty sick of it during the war. The men in my unit used to call it meatloaf that didn’t pass its physical.”

“The..war?” 

“The second world war. It happened over seventy five years ago. Way before your time.” 

His mind throws up obscure, random images at the mention of this war. A screen in a theater as rows of men in black and white uniforms goosestep across it, fire and machines blasting, men with guns shouting over the racket, broken and bleeding bodies strewed upon an open field under a blue, cloudless sky. 

He blinks and it’s Steve peering worriedly at him. 

“You look like you’re a thousand miles away, just now.” 

He can’t differentiate if these snatches form pieces of his own memories or are they something he has read or watched before when he was still breathing.

“Some..guy. Hit..ler?” A dumpy breather appears in his mind’s eye, with bristly hair across his upper lip, and fanatical eyes. 

Steve brightens. “That’s right. You probably learned about the war in school.” 

Not that he can accurately gauge how old he is, but it doesn’t appear as if Steve is much older than himself. He might have been in his twenties when he died. If this world war happened over seven decades ago, and Steve had fought in it, which would mean he’s close to about…one hundred years old? 

B examines the face in front of him closely. The flesh is still unlined, free of wrinkles and spots, still smooth and his eyes are clear. Nothing that would make him appear to be almost a century ancient.

“I’m older than I look, trust me on this. Positively geriatric in fact. I should be wearing tracksuits and driving a winnebago apparently if the world hasn’t gone to hell.” Steve sits on the floor, cross-legged, and pats the spot next to him. 

After a short hesitation, he folds himself down a little clumsily. 

Grabbing the tin opener, Steve starts working the top of the spam can. He lifts the flap up before inhaling at the meat contained within carefully. B passes him the spoon and watches as the human scoops out a soft glop and starts chewing. The spam meat looks unappetizing but if it keeps Steve alive, he’ll bring back ten more cans of the same.

“Taste different from what I remember. Saltier. Kinda waxy too.” Steve grimaces and washes it down with a gulp of water from a bottle. 

“Spam,” he takes out another can and studies it, turning it round in his hand. He shrugs as if signifying what the heck and proceeds to open that as well, “with beans. I have to admit, this does bring back fond memories of wartime grub. Nah, who am I kidding. I don’t miss the food we use to have at all. You know what I really miss? The music. Benny Goodman, the Duke, Artie Shaw, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald. We really had ourselves some great sounds back when.”

“How..old..are you?”

“Give or take, ninety-six this year. It’s a long story.” 

“Want..to know..about you.” Everything. He wants to know everything. He wants to peel back all the layers that construct Steve into this being. And once he reaches the core, he will breathe in deeply and hold him inside, never letting go.

“You sure you got the time?” 

He’s familiar enough with the human by now to discern he’s teasing so he responds in kind. “Jerk,” he rumbles.

He doesn’t know why Steve unexpectedly smiles so brilliantly at him.

B learns a lot more in the following days. Not just Steve’s history, which is fascinating, but also how the rest of the world is faring. 

He can’t reconcile Steve’s descriptions of how he used to be a skinny, sickly breather whom even a dead might scorn to eat (maybe not) with this tall human male possessing wide shoulders, a firm chest and strong legs, and incredible combat abilities. 

Super soldier serums sound a little far-fetched to him but then, the dead are walking and he’s one of them, so who’s he to judge about what’s possible and not.

“We lost most of the west coast. Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, San Diego. Los Angeles was holding until a few months ago. There’s been no contact from the SHIELD outpost there. Sam flew in for a reconnaissance with no luck and when he returned, he wouldn't say what he saw over there.” Steve obsessively picks at a stray thread on a cushion he’s lying on. “There’s too few of us left to make a decisive stand. And the places left to us, they’re not completely under control either. All it takes is one bite and a new outbreak starts all over again.”

“The strain keeps mutating and evolving, making finding a cure impossible. Maybe if we had more time but it’s something we’re running out of. Bruce’s almost at the end of his rope. Clint and Sam are stretched to the max as it is, making survivor runs. And Tony, he’s...he’s not doing so good lately.”

“Don’t be..sad.” 

“I’m not, I’m scared stiff.” A hollow chuckle escapes Steve. He finally leaves the frayed cushion alone and folds his arms under his head, staring up at the concrete ceiling. He looks so tired, under the unforgiving lights of the vault. “More than half the world’s population is dead. And they’re not staying dead. I just don’t know if we can still carry on, can even rebuild what's lost, if we get through this.”

“I'm so..rry.”

“Don't say that. I didn’t mean to imply it’s your fault.” 

But he rather suspects it is. He has experienced the hunger and he has consumed breathers in order to slake it. If he’s not the whole problem, then he’s certainly part of it. He wants to comfort Steve but doesn’t know what to say to make him feel better. Sorry, we don’t understand where the hunger comes from but we have to eat your kind to extinction? 

It’s you or us. That used to be the answer to the question.

Only, sitting next to Steve and gazing at his exhausted face, listening to his side, the breathers' side, he’s not so sure anymore.

\-----

There’s still enough food and water to last Steve for another two days but he has a plan and to accomplish it, he needs to go outside of the vault again.

This time, it’s five deadies who surprises him as he turns a corner. He fights them off easily, breaking their necks and spines with well-placed kicks and punches. The heads still snap viciously at him with biting teeth as they lay wrecked on the ground and he wonders if he should put them out of their misery since they can't move anymore. Give them the final, absolute death. 

Other dead are gathering and they’re looking at him. There are no further attacks but he can sense an overt unfriendliness, a sensation of growing resentment, and it’s directed at him.

He growls, a warning low and deep in his throat, and they continue watching with that eerie stillness, when he enters the building of the vault.

And the vault is very empty when he steps in. The makeshift bed comprising of the rugs and cushions Steve has been sleeping on is neatly arranged to a side. The only sound in the place is the computer screen blipping on and off.

Steve has gone, has left, he’s alone and there is a painful yank inside him, as if heart, lungs and stomach are being torn out. It’s not even been a week and he has gotten himself addicted to Steve’s smiles, his voice, his questions, his stories. 

He walks over to the bed, slow, slouching, and pinned in the middle of a turquoise colored cushion is a small yellow paper.

_‘Need some air. Will be on the roof. Come on up.’_

The roof of the building is not an area he has visited in all the time he’s been here. It’s tall enough that a wind is breezing, helping to diffuse the noxious fumes of a hundred thousand decaying bodies.

Steve’s form is silhouetted against the disappearing sunlight, outlined in molten gold, as he leans beside the parapet, chin propped on the palm of a hand.

When B comes to stand beside him, he gives in to the urge to peer down. There is an instant of vertigo before his eyes focuses on the scene below. Thronging the pavements and road, laid out beneath, are dozens of the dead, moving like unhurried ants. They look very much like what they used to be, your standard, average breathers, from this high up above. 

Steve’s pointing out a sprawling white structure in the far distance to him. “That’s the Lincoln Memorial. I used to have my morning laps there, real early when the sky’s beginning to light into dawn. Big city but it was quiet then, peaceful, during that time. Just joggers and people who can’t sleep.”

He looks all sad again so B nudges his shoulder with his own and gets one in return. This is probably as good as a time as any so he lifts what he’s been holding in one hand and places it on the ledge between them. 

“Got this..for you.” He has already loaded the record inside the player. Miraculously, it powers up, running on batteries that still works. He touches a button and there is a piano instrumental playing before a woman’s deep and soulful voice starts singing through the speakers.

She caresses each word, infusing them with bittersweet melancholia, and it doesn’t matter what she’s singing about because there’s surprise and delight on Steve’s face, the previous unhappiness and worry chased away.

“I know that voice anywhere. That’s Billie Holiday.” 

“Said..you missed..music..from your time.” Riffling through cluttered racks of square plastic casings took him a long time but he finally found a few with names etched on them that he remembered being mentioned to him.

“How did you even manage to find a player and the disc?”

He shrugs. “Record..store..around here.”

“Record store? You mean a music shop? And I thought I was the only one still referring to records.” Steve is regarding him with a funny look. He can’t read what it means but it makes him feel like little worms are burrowing underneath his skin, all excited and tingly. “Thank you. I mean it.”

The light is fading, the hanging crescent sliver of the moon visible to the naked eye, and there is a new tune playing, the same intoxicating yearning pouring into every note being sung. He’s clean forgotten about music, songs, the aching beauty of a voice used for something that isn’t a ceaseless moaning or the thin whisper of a dying scream. 

Maybe it’s the singer’s powerful longing communicating and affecting them both, that makes what happen next, happen. 

Steve is holding out a hand towards him and he’s asking, “Care to dance?”

“Can’t. Don’t re..member..how to.” 

“I’ll teach you. Just do what I do.” Saying so, he moves forward and B suddenly finds himself within the circle of Steve’s arms. His wrists are loosely grasped and his hands are being positioned low on Steve’s back, palms flat. The smooth material of a t-shirt is what he connects with first before warmth gradually seeps through to his cold fingers. 

“Here we go,” Steve whispers into his ear, lips brushing the lobe, and a reflex shudder runs throughout him at the brief contact. Hands are placed on both sides of his abdomen, fingers grasping firmly, and his body is being lightly steered as their feet move in tandem. A small step to the left and back. Follow with a leisurely half-turn and another step to the right this time and back again. Repeat. 

It should feel wrong, a dead learning to dance with a breather while Billie Holiday croons about one for her baby on a rooftop as the world ends around them, but it doesn’t. They’re standing so close, inches apart, and it’s fine. Better than fine.

He slides his arms up and he’s cupping Steve’s neck with laced fingers, leaning in until foreheads are touching. Their eyes are locked on each other’s and they’re swaying slowly to the music now, barely moving.

Every time Steve breathes out, he pulls each exhalation of air into his own lungs. It’s proof of the human’s exquisite mortality and he holds each breath inside of him for as long as he can.

A thought strikes him. 

“Steve?”

“Yes?”

“Not..the girl. Am I?” He’s recalling the one being led in a dance is usually the female. 

“You are definitely not the girl, nope,” Steve laughs softly.

There are more wafts of air swirling out from his mouth as he does. B captures each one in and he breathes.


	4. Chapter 4

It’s cold, it’s too cold. His fingers are numb, and they scrabble for purchase on the smooth metal surface he’s lying on.

The room is dimly lit, there are machines blinking on and off around him, and a sharp reek of chemicals and the unmistakable whiff of spilt blood permeates the air.

His breaths come out, taking shape in the chilled atmosphere. He can’t move. His body is heavy, sluggish. When he looks down, there are needles taped and inserted into his arms. Long rubber tubes are attached to those needles which in turn run up to bags filled with unknown liquids floating in the air.

A plump man is bending over, inspecting him like a bug under a microscope. The head is distorted, eyes bulging behind wire-rimmed glasses, bobbing on a ridiculously small neck. A head can’t be that big, it’s twice the size of a normal human’s. It’s grotesque. The sight adds to his discomfort and there is fear. Oh dear God, he is terrified.

‘Good morning, Sergeant Barnes. How are you today?’ The man with a face as broad as the moon is saying to him in a clipped accent. The man’s hand pats his shoulder as if one would to a pet and it drifts down to his arm. He cringes and does his best to twist away from the touch.

‘You have held up very well under the tests. So much better than all the rest. You are quite our star pupil. We have very high hopes for you.’

The man leans in closer. The mouth widens and continues to elongate until it’s all he can see in his vision. Lips pulled high and taut to both sides of the cheeks and the inside is black like ink while a red tongue flops and twists upon itself. Teeth that appear are jagged, broken and this shark-like mouth is looming over him and he stifles the scream hiding just behind his throat.

‘But we have no use for this arm. We will build you a far more superior one instead.’

The maw opens impossibly wide and bites down on his shoulder, ripping his arm, tearing skin, flesh and bone. The wet, crunching sounds as his arm is being torn, being eaten, is obscene.

He turns his head, unwilling to be a witness to this violent mutilation of his body.

When it finally ends, there is a gaping hole in his left shoulder. Faceless men appear in blood-stained white smocks. And they are literally faceless with smooth, unbroken skin where eyes, nose, and a mouth should be.

Despite having nothing to see with, they deftly fit a new arm for him and it’s made of metal. The restraints are gone from his body and the table he was lying on has metamorphosed into a black chair. He sits up, testing by flexing the fingers of this thing that is a part of him now.

‘You see? You are new and much improved.’ The first man is laughing with glee and clapping his hands together.

All he can think of is, he’s so cold.

“Wake up.” A voice is calling out to him. He’s lying down on yielding softness and it’s different from the hard metal top he was on. He registers that he’s lying down…but he never lies down. Not since he’s died.

“B, hey.” There is a slight shaking of a shoulder and he recoils, recalling something about teeth that makes him do that. He has to get up. This prone position feels too vulnerable, too unguarded; he hastily heaves his upper body upright.

His head connects with something solid, a flash of dull pain is experienced, and there’s a grunt from...it’s Steve. He peels open his eyes, squinting against the strong, false lights of the vault.

“Warn a guy first before you do that.” Steve is crouched next to him, rubbing his forehead with the heel of a palm.

“Do..what?”

“Don’t worry about it. How’re you feeling?”

“Cold,” he replies truthfully. The expression of worry deepens on Steve’s face. Without another word, he drags a blanket out from somewhere to wrap it tightly across his shoulders. B realizes he’s sitting among the pile of rugs that is Steve’s improvised bedding.

Steve is rubbing the blanket around him, trying to warm him up, and he feels bad that he seems to be constantly making the human fuss over him. He’s supposed to be the one taking care of him, not the other way around.

“Better?”

“What..happened?”

“You fell asleep as I was telling you about Thor and how Odin cut us off because he was afraid of the zombie plague reaching Asgard’s doorstep. And no one’s been in contact with Thor since he went in search of Loki.”

“It’s not..possi..ble. Don’t sleep. Told..you.” And he doesn’t. He’s able to rest but actual sleep is something he hasn’t done since he woke up from his death to walk as a dead.

“I was checking the computer and when I looked back, your eyes were closed. You were out for about six hours. I didn’t want to wake you actually but…”

“But?” he prompts. He’s already sure he's not going to like Steve’s answer but unable to stop himself from asking.

“I think you were dreaming. You know how in REM state, they say the eyes would be moving underneath the lids to indicate the person is dreaming? Yours were rolling like a ship in a storm.”

Steve wouldn’t lie to him. He knows it is not in the human’s nature to deceive. A deadie sleeping is one thing…dreaming is another whole new level. It’s almost like he’s a…he can’t finish the thought.

Steve seems to know what he is thinking and voices it out for him. “Dreaming is something what we, what breathers, do.”

“Not..alive. I can’t..be. I died.”

“Think about it. You said you’ve been attacked by your kind. You thought it was because they scented me on you. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t me. It’s _you_ they smell.”

He shakes his head in rejection of the theory. Dead is dead. It’s impossible to be alive again just because…just because he wants to be with Steve.

“And that’s not all. While you were asleep, I think I found something. I managed to retrieve a file inside the computer. It’s incomplete and encrypted like you wouldn’t believe but I broke some of it. B, your real name may be James Barnes.”

_Good morning, Sergeant Barnes_

He didn’t mean to do it, it happens before he even knows what he is doing and Steve’s head snaps backwards from the punch he has swung with his metal arm.

Since he’s sitting, he couldn’t put his full strength behind the punch but that is merely accidental. As it is, a bright droplet of blood squeezes out from the broken skin at the edge of the mouth and trickles down before Steve regains his balance and wipes it with the back of a hand.

The blood stain smears on the skin and he’s temporarily riveted to the sight.

“You really should warn a guy first before you do that,” Steve repeats, as he works his jaw gingerly. Except for that small cut on the lip, there’s no other evident damage. There’s no anger or recrimination emanating from Steve either. Instead, the human is offering him that same understanding and acceptance and it makes him feel even worse over what he has done.

“So..rry,” he manages before getting up and making for the door. He can’t be in the same room right now, breathing in the same air, with the knowledge of what he just did. He has hurt Steve. It’s the singularly most awful thing he has done, notwithstanding having eaten breathers.

“B!”

Ignoring Steve’s exclamation behind him, he leaves the vault and walks off as fast as he can, leaving the building to head out to the street. It’s still early and the sun’s just peeking over the horizon. He doesn’t go far, only a few blocks, before he’s being surrounded by deadies.

They shuffle towards him in increasing numbers until he has to push his way through. They keep coming until he’s boxed in and shoving the ones nearest to him only causes new bodies to take the vacated spots.

None of the corpses around him makes a sound, not even their habitual moaning. They are regarding at him with the same hushed concentration. It’s almost as if they are assessing the situation. Assessing him.

He stops in his tracks when there is a little boy, not more than seven or eight, in front of him. The boy is missing his arm from the elbow and scraps of dried flesh hang off the stump. His other hand is clutching a female in a stained blue dress who lets him do it.

The dead boy frowns at him with those unseeing white eyes, and a disconcerting depression wells inside of him. This new world order of flesh-eating zombies is fucked up, but it’s what he knows and he’s safe here among them. At least, he had been. Now he’s neither their kind nor Steve’s kind. What the hell is he becoming?

“Just what..do..you want,” he demands bleakly to the undead crowd gathered around him. “ _What_?”

The collective stasis breaks as he speaks and they swell towards him in a wave.

He fights them off ferociously. Using his _improved_ arm and thick boots, he successfully repels the initial surge, punching, kicking and a mound of limbs and torsos soon litter at his feet. But there are too many hands, gashing teeth and yellowed nails, and when the first bite lands on his bicep, the flesh one, he’s marginally protected by his hoodie so whoever’s trying to eat him only gets a mouthful of fabric.

He clutches a handful of hair and hauls the head that’s biting him. There is a sickening, tearing sound and he’s holding a chunk of scalp with hair and dried brain matter instead. The mouth continues to gnaw at him and he’s unbearably reminded of another pair of teeth, shark-like, on a man with wire-rimmed glasses.

He takes hold of the back of the neck and crushes it with fingers and flings the deadie at an oncoming new group. Only to have another set of teeth clamping down on his hand, on the part unprotected by clothing, and he yelps at the pain.

Several pairs of bony hands clutch his arms, reaching for his head, and he can only perceive a multitude of decaying faces, ravenous mouths in his line of sight. He stumbles and there are more hands holding him tight and his arms and legs are being tugged relentlessly in different directions. He tries to shake free but it’s useless. There’s countless of them and numbers always win out.

This is probably what breathers must have felt, this heart-stopping panic and horror that threatens to cloud the senses, when they’re seconds away from being devoured.

He just wants another chance to tell Steve again he’s sorry for punching him and that he really likes dancing and Billie Holiday.

He’s close to blacking out from the agony and discomfort of being tugged apart like a rag doll when Steve is yelling, “get away from him!” and the heads of two deadies trying to bite through his sleeve are sheared off cleanly by Captain America’s shield.

With one freed hand, he reaches out and seizes the shield in mid-air and slams it against the rest holding him. They fly back, from the force of his blows and he uses the reprieve to fight his way towards Steve. Reaching his side, he sees it’s not just the human who is here; a shock of red hair is next the blonde.

Nat who, in as brutal a fashion as Steve, is on the offensive and wielding a…if he’s seeing what he’s seeing, it looks like his friend is wielding an actual sword. And very efficiently too as she decapitates numerous heads with it.

There isn't an opportunity to speak as he lobs the shield back to Steve and his own weapon is his metal arm but there is an abnormal ache at the juncture of the shoulder, every time he uses it to pummel a deadie down.

In a short time, the three of them manage to fight a way out of the pack surrounding them. Once they clear a path, it’s easy enough to outrun the lumbering corpses.

B can feel something is wrong with him; the twinge is intensifying to a barbed pain that would periodically shoot throughout the arm. He grits his teeth and it's a few steps later when a particularly agonizing spike causes him to lurch and fall to his knees.

“I’ve got you,” Steve affirms. Arms come under his shoulder blades and knees and B finds himself being lifted and carried like he is some kind of dame in distress.

“Not..the girl,” he cradles his wounded arm to his side and insists.

“No, you are definitely not the girl to me.” Steve bends his head and presses lips to his forehead fleetingly. While he appreciates the gesture, he can’t help but still think this is so fucking humiliating.

“Move!” Nat yells at them, an urgent note in her tone. Deadies are pouring out from all available avenues and the woodwork like ants now and while slow, they are also relentless when food has been sighted.

They make it back to the building and Nat bolts the two heavy front doors shut. Just in time as the doors fold inwards as if many bodies are pushing against it. But they hold. She glances quickly around the foyer of the bank building, noting the windows. “Ground floor..is secure?”

“Yes,” he replies as Steve sets him down on his feet but still keeps an arm around his back, lending support. “Windows are..fortified. Nice..sword.”

Nat doesn't answer. Instead, she walks over to him and pulls back a fist to sock him one in the jaw. His head rocks back. “Ow,” he mumbles.

“Now..you and him are..even. Don’t..run off. Fool.”

He squints at Steve who looks like he had been caught stealing candy from a jar. “She came right after you left and asked what happened. She was quite persuasive,” he explains.

“Witless..fool.” Nat repeats with annoyance.

“It’s not his fault, ma’am.”

She turns to glare at Steve. “He thinks..he hurt..you.” Nat roll her eyes dismissively. “And _he_ can..take a..punch,” she tells B.

“She’s right, you know. I’ve taken worse knocks before and you didn’t mean to. You have a mean left hook though, I gotta say.”

He uses his thumb to touch the cut, careful not to press, and feels the curve of Steve’s lips. “Sorry.” Behind him, he hears Nat give a snort.

“I’m the one who should be apologizing to you. I don't have the right to pry into your past.”

“You're not wrong. I..am changing. Sleeping. Dreaming. The ones..outside. They can sense the difference. Nat..if I am..changing. You should be..too. We're the same.”

Nat merely looks at him, enigmatic and as unreadable as a sphinx. She props the sword, covered with zombie ick, against a bank teller's counter and folds her arms at her chest. There is a subtle shift to her posture as she shakes her head. “Not..quite like..you, B. So tell me..about your..dreams.”

There is only just that one so far and he relates what he can recall. The balding man with the wire rimmed glasses. Giving what he called his new and improved metal arm.

When he’s done, Nat mutters, “Arnim Zola” and the expression on her is one of disgust. As if she has spied a particularly nasty vermin and especially wanted to step on it.

“Zola?” Steve sounds startled and also, upset. His arm around B tightens.

“You..know him,” he says. There’s a name to the pudgy tormentor in his dream. Arnim Zola. He gives an involuntary shiver and there's that sensation of deadly cold again.

Steve notices his shudder and shrugs off the long sleeved shirt he's wearing, leaving him in a tee. He drapes the shirt over him before putting an arm back across his shoulders again, sharing his body heat. As always, the warmness feels good and he presses himself a little deeper against Steve's side.

“I’ve heard of him. He was a scientist working for HYDRA and second in command to Johann Schmidt. I told you about Schmidt, how he took an early version of the serum too. I fought him during the war but I never came into direct contact with Zola.”

“He’s..smarter than..Schmidt. He’s a..coward and cowards..they...” Nat’s frustration at the brokenness of her speech radiates forth. She squeezes her eyes shut for a few seconds and when she opens them, the frustration has been replaced by determination. “They always manage to find a way to squirm out of their predicaments. That’s why he survived even after you defeated Red Skull,” she finishes.

It’s Steve’s turn to eye her with suspicion and the beginnings of mistrust. “You seem to know a lot, ma’am. Who are you? Who were you?”

The person standing just a few feet away from him is his friend, has been his friend since she first found him in the vault. They have hunted together and she has nagged at him constantly to change his clothes. Nat’s his friend. But it's increasingly clear she is a keeper of his secrets.

Nat must have guessed his conflicted feelings as her stance relaxes a little and her eyes soften. “B. I’m..sorry. I really am. Trust me when I say we are..friends. I'll do..my best to protect you.”

“Tell me..the truth then. Tell me everything.”

She sighs. Her next words are directed at Steve instead. “Is B..changing?”

“I believe so, yes. The attacks on him by the dead are proof he's no longer what he was before. Now that you've added Zola to the equation. I read about the experiments he conducted...on living subjects.” Here, he stops and darts a quick glance at B and he thinks how everyone seems to be staring at him with a kind of grave portent. He's not stupid, just dead. Kind of dead. He can put two and two together and it's painfully obvious he had been one of Zola's experiments.

“Could it be possible that B didn't really die? Maybe he’s in some sort of suspended animation state like I had been.”

“Good hypo..thesis but not..likely. He..was dead before he was revived by..the virus. I checked..thoroughly.”

“And how is it you know about this vault to locate B?”

“I was..ordered to track down Zola.”

“Who gave you that order?” The sternness in Steve's voice is apparent and B can almost picture him as a leader of men in the war and as an Avenger.

“You..know him too.” There’s no small amount of irony in the action as Nat throws a mock two-finger salute at Steve. “Agent Natasha Romanov reporting..in. Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. At your..service, Captain Rogers.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates are a bit slow, I know! But they will come.


	5. Chapter 5

“Natasha Romanov. I’ve heard of you, you’re the Black Widow. Did Fury give you the order?” Steve presses on. 

“Your clearance level isn’t..high enough,” Nat replies with a faint smirk as he begins to frown. B has a moment when he takes in how he finds even Steve’s scowling delightful. Then there is an actual spasm near the region of the metal arm and he clamps his lips tightly over teeth to squeeze the pain back in.

Nat is continuing despite her dig at Steve regarding his clearance level. “When the plague first broke, SHIELD had..intel that it possibly could be a bio-engineered virus..by HYDRA, courtesy of Zola.”

“Is Zola the cause of all this then?”

“Zola is..dead and he’s not the one. He was..long deceased when the plague was running its initial stages. He isn’t..one of us either.”

There is a rush of overwhelming relief when he hears what Nat has to say, followed by some shame for being scared of a chubby, bespectacled boogeyman who has only appeared once in a dream. But just the mere mention of the name is enough to convey a bone-deep panic to his psyche. The tormentor is dead, no resurrection of the walking kind and he can't help but be grateful for this small mercy.

“Who is B really? Is he a man called James Barnes? Is that who he is?”

“Why is B’s past..so important?” Nat shoots back with a question of her own as her still beautiful features turns severe; the sham frivolity earlier is utterly gone. “And don’t tell me because your boyfriend says..you are the key to saving the world.”

“He’s..not my boyfriend.”

“We’re not like that, ma’am.” They both speak out at the same time.

Nat puts one hand on a hip and pointedly fixes her eyes at Steve’s arm around him and how the latter is practically plastered to his side. There’s another one of those inconvenient blushes creeping up from his neck and blooming on his cheeks. Steve doesn't let go of his arm but he studiously keeps a steady gaze on the former agent’s face.

She addresses B directly. “If you want to find out..there’s no going..back after. You won’t..like it,” she warns.

“Zola was HYDRA. Did he use..me for their purposes? That’s why you don’t want to tell me.”

There it is, spoken aloud, the crux of the issue for him. The arm Zola forced on him, normal breathers don’t get super strong bionic arms like it. Hearing Steve tell of his encounters with HYDRA, the things they did to further their greed for power and domination, and if Zola had been one of them, he can't have been 'improved' for anything good.

Part of him doesn’t want the truth, not with Steve around but perversely, he needs him to be here too. 

“They broke you. You resisted..but they used the chair. It wipes..your memories. Re-programmed you so many times until you broke. Whatever Zola fed you with..it’s why you’re the way you are now.” After her previous reticence, this blunt disclosure is unexpected and while he has suspected as much since he started to notice the chair in his vault, he can still experience revulsion and horror from this irrefutable fact that he has been so tampered with.

There is only one other logical question to ask and he does. “What did HYDRA make me do?”

She replies grimly, “You..have to find that out yourself.”

“And you? Were you one of Zola’s experiments too?” asks Steve. 

“I was..one of HYDRA’s many experiments. The serum given to you by Erskin, HYDRA had tried to replicate it. Zola came closest to succeeding and B is the only subject to survive after testing. I have..a variant of it in me. Not to both of your..extent. But enough.”

“So B’s like me then?” 

“Close but different..strains. You also should..have partial resistance from the virus if you..die. But the hunger, you can’t fight it, resistance or not.” As if irritated over admitting to having to eat breathers, she says, “So is this..what you want..to know?”

“No. Who killed B, I want to know who did it.” And this question of Steve’s leaves him stunned. He has never thought of _how_ he died, except he had. What’s even more surprising is the touch of anger detected in Steve’s voice as he demands an answer and the hand on his shoulder suddenly clenches. 

“You’re hurting him,” Nat proclaims sharply. "And he's..wounded."

Steve hurriedly withdraws his arm to move a step back. B misses the warmth almost immediately.

“Where?” He spies the bite on B’s hand and taking hold of the arm, he pushes the sleeve up to have a better look. The teeth imprints are clear and deep, and sluggish dark red blood is oozing out of the mangled flesh. “We should stop the bleeding.”

Nat offers, “I’ll..see if a first aid kit..is around.” 

“Good, thanks.” Steve narrows his eyes at the former SHIELD agent. “Wait, are you sidetracking me from asking about what you know.”

“Yes. And it’s..working,” she admits freely as she leaves through a door marked ‘No Entry for Non-Employees’ in big, bold letters. Steve’s frown returns and is directed at her retreating back. The frown becomes a slight shake of the head before he turns to B and takes stock of the multitude of rips and tears in the hoodie he’s wearing, along with the liberal zombie gore splattered on it.

“Do you want to take that off? It’s nearly rags already.” 

Without thinking, he reaches down with both hands to grab the bottom of the hoodie, intending to pull it off, and it’s a mistake. He winces as the motion pulls at the edge of his shoulder where flesh and muscles meet metal. The hurting throbs and intensifies and he thinks he might have dislocated something when the deadies were pulling at him. Thing is he’s still in the dark about the mechanisms of his arm and how it functions, the manner it has been joined to him or if there’s any remnants of a bone structure remaining inside. 

Steve is at once by his side and even as he’s asking “what’s wrong?” he’s already unzipping the hoodie for him and carefully peeling it off. 

He’s not wearing anything underneath, his upper body is exposed to the light of day and there is an absurd urge to cover himself. It’s unlike the time when Steve casually undressed in front of him, when changing out of his soiled clothes. Steve is unspoiled while there’s that pale pallor of the dead still upon him and the same light pattern of blue veins crisscrossing his chest and torso. And there are a number of scars etched upon his flesh. He guesses they're a result of what he was forced to do under HYDRA and it makes him even more self-conscious about his body. 

If Steve notices the faint mutilations on his body, he doesn’t mention them. “Your arm?” 

“Yeah...”

“Can I?” 

When he allows it, Steve uses his fingers to lightly probe around the cusp of flesh and the steel. “Tell me if this hurts." The hand presses and pain flares. It must have shown even though he says nothing despite Steve's instruction to do so.

“Dislocated shoulder I think,” he confirms what B has assumed. “I can try setting it back. You trust me?”

“Do it.”

“Hold on to me. It’ll be fast.” Doing as he’s told, he wraps one arm around Steve’s back and waits. Steve is applying unrelenting pressure onto his shoulder and there’s a wrench on the injured arm, more agony, a distinct pop, and something shifts inside him. It’s not a pleasant sensation at all. He grunts as the hurt subsides to a dull throb and a lingering soreness at the affected area. 

He doesn’t let go his hold on Steve’s back and tucks his face against the neck instead, drawing in deep breaths to inhale the human’s unique scent until he feels sufficiently calm.

“Does it still hurt bad?” Fingers are stroking the back of his head, carding through his hair.

“Better. But…”

“But?”

“Being alive is overrated,” he states morosely. Having to deal with re-surfacing emotions, Nat’s evasiveness, his past as an ex-minion of HYDRA, and there could be far worse to come if he finds out who he really had been, he just prefers to be dead again. Zombie as a state of being was so much easier to handle.

He feels the vibrations running through Steve’s body as he tries to smother his laughter at the muffled assertion.

“It’s not without its perks. There’s dancing, for one. And there’s this…” Steve stops speaking in mid-sentence so B lifts his head up to ask what else besides dancing and his lips are caught up in a kiss. 

Steve’s just pressing his mouth to his for a few seconds and while he likes the gentle tenderness of the action very much, he decides to tilt his head and graze his lips slightly to the right, to see what happens. Steve has an intake of breath as if he’s been surprised and he grabs hold of B’s head, clasping with hands to pull him in, and the kiss deepens, becoming increasingly intense and frantic.

He parts his lips instinctively at one point and the tip of a tongue darts in. He nearly bites down, startled, but after the initial blunder, he obligingly opens his mouth and allows Steve full access. It’s not long before he learns that tongues swiping wet and slippery together, creates a whole host of pleasurable sensations that send tingles down his spine.

The kiss reaches its culmination when he extends an arm too tightly on Steve’s back, it’s the injured one, and he pulls off to pant softly.

“Oh God, I’m sorry,” Steve apologies breathlessly. “Sorry.”

When the sting subsides, he wants to know. “You kissed me. Why?”

“I wanted to. It went a little further than I expected though.” Steve places one broad palm on the location where the dislocation had been and starts to rub gently, soothing the ache with the induced heat. “This is going to sound like a terrible, terrible pick-up line. It's only been what, two weeks? Since we've met. But I feel like I’ve known you a lifetime.”

He’s silent, thinking over what Nat has said, what she refused to say, all the questions still unanswered. He must have appeared doubtful, troubled or maybe it’s just his usual deadie expression, which is blank like a stone wall. But the sight of whatever’s on his face must be doing something to Steve because he stops rubbing to lean in and trace the contour of his mouth with feather-light kisses. 

“I could have been a really bad guy for HYDRA,” he points out when Steve finishes kissing him. “You still want to be my..boyfriend?”

The answer comes straightaway, without any hesitation. “Sure.”

When Nat strides into the foyer, she barely gives the two a glance before saying brusquely over her shoulder, “Perimeter breached. We..have incoming.” 

She’s slamming the door shut when, at the last second, an arm with the belly-white color of a dead fish comes through the gap and grasps the edge with skeletal fingers. The employees’ door bends forward and more hands appears out from the gap, trying to push in. 

Steve has already vaulted over a bank teller’s counter and is bracing with his shoulder against the door alongside of Nat when B snatches up the sword where it's been left. Using his right arm, he cleaves it down in a stroke, pitilessly shearing off hands and arms that had the misfortune of sticking out from the gap of the door and its frame. 

When it’s fully closed, Steve drags a heavy oaken desk and stacks it against the door. The hands on the floor are still twitching with malignant life and he kicks them to one side. 

“That’s not going to..hold them for long. Too..many out there," Nat observes.

“How did they get in? B said before this place was secure.” 

“It is,” he agrees and he’s sure. He had checked every single possible opening, exit and entrance, almost obsessively. 

“I went in further..into the building and a door was broken. They..came in through it.”

There’s a groove on Steve’s brow as he considers. “The Black Widow has been acknowledged to be an expert manipulator.”

“The things they say about me would fill a..book.” Nat dismisses his allusion to her alleged reputation. “Whatever you think, you can..continue thinking it, but it’s not safe any longer here for B. He’s becoming..too different. You need to take him out of the city.”

“I can’t contact the Avengers for extraction, I lost my transmitter. If we can get to a vehicle, any transport that still runs, it's possible.”

“I’m..right here,” B objects. He has never considered leaving the city and things are moving too fast for his liking. He rescued a breather, learned to dance with and kissed the same breather, gotten nearly torn apart by those he had previously thought of his own kind, and maybe he’s becoming a breather again, as unbelievable as that is. Now, they’re discussing to take him away from the only place he knows. “I can take care of myself.” 

“It’s too risky for you to remain here, B.”

“And it’s a little too..late for that.” Nat reaches into her pocket and brings out a little device that has a red light blinking on and off. “Hawkeye's already on..the way.” 

“Did you steal my transmitter? And you know Clint?” 

“I found your transmitter. And who..did you think brought..me in to SHIELD?” 

As if on cue, the clearly identifiable sound of helicopter blades can be heard in the distance. The banging and pushing on the employees’ door increases and the heavy desk that Steve piled against it starts to rattle alarmingly. The three of them swivel their heads immediately to stare at the door together. 

“Roof, now,” Steve orders. “B, can you walk?”

He gives Steve a look which he hopes fully communicates his displeasure at being treated like a delicate piece of china. If they’re going to be a team, Steve has got to start learning he’s not a dame to be mollycoddled. He quickly flexes his shoulder to test its mobility. Surprisingly it’s not as bad as before, just a little sore now.

“This way,” he says. As they are leaving through the emergency staircase that has roof access, the employees’ door spectacularly bursts open, the desk flying to the side, and the dead pours in, shoving and jostling to get in through the narrow doorway.

He closes the emergency door shut but there’s nothing to keep it shut so they hastily make for the roof, knowing it’s only a matter of minutes before they’re discovered. Halfway up the stairs, Steve catches his hand and twine fingers firmly with his. 

“You really know how to show a guy a good time.” Even with the reverberation of moans echoing on the stairwell below them, he throws a grin at B who retorts, “You haven’t seen nothing yet.” 

When they hit the roof, the noise caused by the helicopter’s blades is deafening and he has no doubt its attracting deadies from the surrounding blocks to the building. 

As soon as they're near enough, he can hear the lone breather piloting the copter, and he has ruggedly striking features and powerfully sturdy biceps that are almost as solid-looking as his metal arm, shout to Steve, “Cap, where the holy fuck have you been hiding and do you know you're holding hands with a guy with no shir…Jesus Christ, _Nat_?!” 

“Hello, Clint. How’s Phil? You two..still dating?”

“We thought you were dead!” 

“I am. I still..am.” 

“What do you mean you’re dead? Like dead _dead_?”

“Clint, talk later, please. If you haven’t noticed, we have got company,” Steve says tersely, jerking his thumb towards the entrance of the roof as the first of the undead burst forth like a wound teeming furiously with maggots. They instantly make a beeline towards the source of the din.

Clint is glaring angrily at Nat who’s getting in the helicopter but B can sense there’s also strong waves of relief and gladness rolling off from the man. “We are going to have a talk as soon as we land,” he warns her, before turning back to the controls to flick several switches and the rotary blades begin picking up greater speed. Her lips merely twist in a smile at what Clint said.

As the helicopter starts lifting itself up, Nat starts speaking and it takes an effort for B to discern what she’s saying over the ensuing noise.

“—still dead, they won’t..want me. You are James Buchanan Barnes, born nineteen seventeen. Rank, Sergeant, United States Army. Captured by HYDRA in nineteen forty three. If you really..want to know, start from there.”

She grasps the sides of the copter door and the last thing she says to him is, “Don’t come..back. And you, Steve Rogers, keep him safe. HYDRA _is still here_.” She pivots in a graceful arc, flipping her body out and backwards, of the helicopter

Steve, being nearest, reacts instantaneously and makes a grab for one of her arms but she’s too fast and he's too late. She falls.

“Fuck! Goddamnit, Natasha!” Clint curses and the helicopter swerves precariously before righting itself. 

Like a cat, the Black Widow safely lands on her feet in spite of the height. The dead stream past her crouching figure, completely disregarding her presence to focus on the hovering helicopter instead. Many hands stretch upwards, fingers clawed and greedy in futile efforts to get at the breathers who are out of their reach. The gathered mass of bodies is making it impossible for the helicopter to land again and B just knows Nat must have planned it that way.

She gets up and briefly gives that same ironic two-finger salute at them before running towards the only access from the roof and disappearing from sight.


	6. Chapter 6

Clint stays silent for most of the journey as he navigates them to their destination. Nobody wanted to leave Nat behind and the helicopter circled the roof a few times but B was certain she would not be coming back.

The pack of dead had grew incrementally, pouring through the roof access doorway, until the surface was swarming as they, swaying and moaning with rapacious intent, tried their best to grab the breathers down from their hovering transport in the air. In the press of wrecked, decaying bodies, a number were further pushed to the edge of the roof by the ones behind and tumbled over. B could see pulpy bodies bursting like ripe sacs as they hit the concrete pavement below or crushing other deadies under their mass.

After another loop, Clint wordlessly banged the side window located next to his seat with a fist and that was all before he angled the copter from the roof, away from the building.

Despite the resulting quietness from Barton, B doesn’t sense any overt antagonism coming from him. He does, however, dart quick looks at the dead person sitting next to Captain America and B stares blandly back whenever that happens.

It must be quite evident he’s one of the recent dead as he’s still shirtless so his pallor and light blue veins are openly on display. He’s clad only in his jeans and boots and he can’t cover his chest from sight since he left his hoodie back in the foyer of the bank, although Steve has wrapped his arms around him to keep him from getting too chilled from the higher altitude they’re presently at.

Below them, a city inhabited mostly by the dead lies sprawling and soon they reach the outskirts and head out into the wide horizon, empty of buildings and human-made constructions, just sky and wisps of white clouds.

“Second star to the right and..straight on..till morning,” he whispers and wrinkles his brow. The phrase just pop inside his mind, he doesn’t know where he heard it from or what the context of it is but it seems appropriate somehow.

“Feeling cold?” Steve asks worriedly, not catching what he just said and assuming he’s feeling chilled. Which he is, as a matter of fact.

“Some.” Admitting it causes Steve to enfold him tighter in the circle of his arms and he instinctively lays his head down on the shoulder nearest to him. From the corner of his eye, he sees Clint turn slightly from his pilot seat to scrutinize them and how his eyebrows climb up on his forehead at their huddling.

I’m freezing, that’s why, he has this impulse to explain but doesn’t since Steve isn’t saying anything either.

“We’ll find her,” Steve reassures him and although he nods, he knows if she doesn’t want to be found, she won’t. And he thinks Clint knows that as well, if he has been her comrade too, which is why he had given up waiting back at the roof for her.

Nat’s departure has not surprised him except the way it had been so unexpected. She would leave without word for days on end when he had been staying in the vault and he would only realize she’s returned when she came by to ask if he’s hungry and proceeded to cajole him to hunt together. His past might be shrouded in obscurity and contradictions but Nat’s own breather history and how they became intertwined is an even bigger puzzle which might never come to light.

It’s then he recalls he hasn’t eaten since meeting Steve and awhile before that. He looks down at his belly and it seems to be still the same, not overly shrunken or caved in from lack of sustenance. After a pause and doing some mental probing of his inner workings, he finds he can’t detect any of the imperative that so defines and drives a deadie to seek out and feed on warm flesh and sweet brains.

This is something different as well. The hunger, while inconvenient and tedious, has been an undeniable part of him since his death.

He decides to file this to examine later, along with his name which Nat has given back to him. James Buchanan Barnes. He had previously thought his name had either started with a Jay or a Bee and guess he was right on both counts. James Buchanan Barnes. It’s a good name. A strong sounding name and he likes it.

He thinks about Nat, and about what she said right before she jumped out of the helicopter. If he was indeed born in nineteen seventeen, he’s like Steve then? But he didn’t crash a plane into ice to save a world and stayed down there for decades. Or maybe he did, he is a former HYDRA henchman after all. Except instead of saving the world, he may have tried to destroy it in a ball of fire. He lets out of a huff of aggravation at all the possibilities that have open up despite know his true name and all the rest that Nat has revealed.

As he ponders on his murky history, there’s an increasing lethargy to his limbs which he can’t understand. It’s like he’s being wrapped under tons of cotton and there is a strong disinclination to move from Steve’s cuddle. The noise of the helicopter blades whirling above is becoming rhythmic, almost hypnotic, to his ears.

Still, he can’t help but wonder about James Buchanan Barnes and what kind of a breather he had been before HYDRA improved him.

\-----

He’s back in the city. But it’s vastly different from what he recalls. There’s no deadies at all. There are breathers...there are _people_ walking around him and everyone’s limbs are intact, no rot setting in. The men are wearing suits with strips of cloth around their necks while the women are in long dresses, gloves and jaunty little hats perched on the top of their heads.

Everyone looks so alive, he wonders. Also, they’re much taller than him, as they tower above his line of sight.

He looks down and he can see bare calves. He’s wearing some kind of wool trousers which only come down to slightly below his knees. His feet are clad in grey socks and worn-looking laced leather boots. And he’s short; the pavement seems so much nearer from this height. His fingers are also smaller and kind of stubbier and both are made of flesh, no metal and steel on the left. That’s strange, why should he think his hand is abnormal, they should be normal.

Still looking at his very ordinary left hand, he continues walking down the avenue, past shops with old fashioned lettering painted on glass windows and slow, boxy cars going past, before he goes by the narrow mouth of an alleyway and the discordant clang of garbage cans clashing and falling over coming from inside.

The alleyway is awfully familiar but exactly why its familiar escapes him right at the moment. But he has to go in, just knowing there’s something of vital importance waiting for him there inside.

There are three kids beating up on a punier one right inside where the alleyway widens into a rundown tenement. The smaller boy is trying to hold his own against his oppressors, punching fists wildly, not giving up though he’s out-numbered by much bigger opponents. The boy’s tenacity is impressive and he has to admire the determination against such odds.

Maybe that’s why, when the smaller one is finally shoved to the ground and a flurry of kicks descend, that he finds himself rushing into the fray, dealing punches of his own against the bullies. When he breaks a nose and crunches the knee of another one with a hard kick, did the persecutors decide to turn tail and limp off as fast as they can.

The scrawny runt is already standing up as the last of the big kids disappears out the alleyway and he looks a sight with a cut lip, right eye that’s puffing shut, one sleeve torn and bleeding from multiple scrapes.

And he’s muttering under his breath, blue eyes still burning fierce and un-cowed despite the pulverizing he has just received. ‘I had them on the ropes,’ is what he says.

‘Sure you did,’ he replies and is already using his sleeve to help wipe blood from the nose and surprisingly, the kid lets him do it. ‘So what you do to make them mad at you?’

‘Saw them stealing from old man Levin’s pawnshop. Told them to give the watch back but they just laughed at me.’

‘But there were three of them and they’re bigger than you.’

‘So? It’s still wrong to steal.’ He has to grin at the answer; the runt has got backbone for sure. When he’s done cleaning the face, those blue eyes are staring at him with distrust and doubt.

‘Never seen you around the neighborhood before, you new?’

He has to think quickly and a vague prompting makes him say, ‘I’m visiting my aunt over the week, she lives around here.’ It could be true or it could be a lie, he can’t remember. The kid accepts it as the truth and the wariness vanishes. He scrubs his palm on his shirt before holding it out.

‘I’m Steve. What’s your name?’

‘Bucky.’

They shake hands firmly and as they do, the runt starts to grow exponentially before his very eyes until he becomes a tall man with strong, handsome features and blonde hair. He looks on in awe at this sudden alteration until he snatches his hand away to take a step back and he stumbles.

Arms shoot forward to catch him tightly and he’s not so cold anymore.

\-----

There’s a lurch, he almost falls off but someone grabs hold of him and he’s being settled once more against warmth and cloth. His eyes flutter open and he’s curled up on a narrow seat, gazing at the inside of a helicopter cockpit and Clint Barton’s back.

The disorientation between the dream state and awakening lingers awhile and he stays where he is, head pillow across Steve’s lap. It’s comfortable anyway and Steve’s running fingers through his hair again. He’s unsure when he crossed over from being conscious to asleep and these...naps are becoming rather awkward if he’s going to slip into states of oblivion just like that.

Clint is saying heatedly, loudly, over his shoulder. “--hell were you thinking? Bringing one of _them_ back to the Tower? Into New York? It’s a clean zone now. Plus Stark’s going to tear him to pieces once he finds out, you know that.”

“He’s not quite like them anymore. He’s changing and if Bruce has a chance to examine him, why he’s changing, it might help us find a cure.”

“We already established there isn’t one. And not quite is not going to cut it with Stark. By the way, Sleeping Beauty’s awake.”

Clint must have eyes in the back of his head, the thought strikes him, as he straightens from the lap and comes up to face Steve who stops conversing immediately to focus his attention on him instead.

“You fell asleep again,” he tells B.

“I was..dreaming.”

“About what?”

“Think..I dreamt about..you,” he says slowly, bringing the scrawny runt he rescued from a pounding in the alleyway to mind. Now that he’s thinking about it, Steve did relay to him before, how he used to be a skinny lick of a breather before he took the serum that enhanced his physique and strength. And the kid in his dream, he had blonde hair too and his eyes, he had Steve’s eyes set in that thin, bruised face. “When you were small. I protected you from a..fight. You weren’t..winning.”

“You are _so_ fucked,” Clint helpfully informs, half turning from his pilot seat to peer at them both, especially at the expression on Steve’s face as he looks at B telling about meeting him in a dream, even if it has never happened in real life.

“Eyes straight ahead and just drive.”

“Sir yes sir. We’re almost there, sir.” There’s a snarkiness to Clint’s tone but no malice as he snaps a rejoinder to Steve’s mild reprimand and B thinks he might get to like this new breather. Not in the way he likes Steve but enough that even if the hunger for flesh is still in him, he won’t try and consume Clint to sate it. Probably.

The landscape below has changed to one of urbanity again, dotted with buildings laid out in squares with roads running in between, interspersed with tall skyscrapers protruding into the sky. As they head further inwards, he notices a grandiose and flamboyant building coming up in the distance and they seem to be heading towards it in a straight trajectory.

As they approach nearer, there’s a flat landing pad jutting out from high upon the top of the tower and attach to the side is the letter 'A'. The steel the letter is made of looks dull and unpolished in the sunlight but it's still mammoth enough to catch anyone’s attention, even from way down the ground beneath.

“Tony’s not known for his subtlety,” Steve sees him staring at the tower, gradually looming larger and taller, to remark dryly. The helicopter flies in, slowly making its descent and there are two figures standing on that concrete pad at the side of the building.

“Tony’s not known for his tolerance towards the dead either. Steve, a blind guy, no, a fucking bonsai plant, can tell you got it bad for B, your name’s B right, really cute alphabet you got going there,” Clint asks and continues on without missing a beat, “but after what happened to Pepper, you know Tony is set to go off like a firecracker at the sight of any of them. He’s not going to let one waltz right through his front door and lay out the welcome mat.”

“I’ll handle Tony, if it comes to that.”

“Trust me, it undoubtedly will,” Clint utters darkly but gives up talking to concentrate on landing the helicopter safely on the airpad.

When it touches down, and before the rotary blades have died down, the two figures have already approached the copter and one of them is waving as Steve leaps off with B following close behind him.

He’s a dark-skinned breather and B remembers him. He’s the one who can fly with metal wings and who first led him to Steve where he had been surrounded by the horde of dead trying to eat him alive. His name is…yes, it’s Sam.

Sam is laughing as he strides over and when they’re together, he throws his arms around Steve and thumps his back a few times with a closed fist. Steve who has a similar wide smile on his face as he hugs Sam in return and at the sight of them, that problematic organ inside his chest give a thump and it doesn’t feel remotely good or fluttery this time. More like an irritated stagger against his rib cage. He has an overpowering impetus to tear them apart from each other and then shred into Sam to rip kidneys and spleen out even though he’s not hungry.

He has to use his flesh arm to grasp the wrist of his metal arm tightly to stop himself from carrying out the compulsion.

“Shit, Rogers, don’t you ever do that to me again. I thought you were a goner, for sure. Just where have you been holing up?” Sam is saying happily as he briefly shakes Steve’s shoulder with his hand after pulling away from the hug.

“It’s good to see you too.” Steve doesn’t seem to mind being handled thus and looks even pleased at the breather’s familiarity with him. B feels worse. Splitting Sam’s head apart and reaching in to scoop out his brains doesn’t seem to be an acceptable option either.

He stays back, as Steve and Sam are still talking animatedly together, and he’s abruptly and unpleasantly alert of the facts that while he might be not quite dead now, he’s still not quite alive. He has left his only sanctuary. He’s likely the only sentient deadie right smack in the middle of a strange city filled with surviving breathers. And, apparently, already Tony wants to exterminate him.

Steve doesn’t notice his caginess but Clint glances his way, folding his eyebrows together, as he comes around the helicopter.

The second breather makes a sudden movement that draws B’s attention when Clint comes into sight. He has been so still that B has forgotten he is standing there. As soon as he's near enough, Clint lands a quick kiss on the side of the man’s mouth, causing him to frown.

“Not here, Barton.” The second man has agreeably ordinary features, not fine-looking like Steve’s or rugged and striking like Clint’s but his eyes, penetrating and intelligent, tells a different story from the mild and bland exterior he’s projecting easily. B quietly thinks this breather might be more dangerous than any of them in certain aspects.

“What, I can’t even say hello to my husband now?” Clint declares chirpily.

“Hello and later.” The severity leaches out from the second man’s face and his eyes soften fractionally before becoming guarded again as he assesses the newcomer carefully, taking in his pale, blue-veined skin and that arm.

“Phil, Nat’s alive…no, she died but she’s not like the rest of the dead. She’s like him. Both have retained cognizant abilities despite death and after death.” Clint jerks his chin towards B who rolls his shoulders uneasily at being outed as a dead person to yet another. He really wishes he hasn't left his hoodie behind at the vault building and crossing his arms over his bare chest would only make him look ludicrous and not hide anything much anyhow.

“She knows him. And Steve clings to him like a limpet. He’s good.”

To his credit, Phil does not blink an eyelid as he takes in what Clint said about Nat and his endorsement for a zombie who’s standing in front of him. His expression stays impassive and he simply nods slightly in acknowledgment. “And where is Agent Romanov now?”

“She didn’t, wouldn’t come back with us. Current whereabouts unknown.” Only a slight flexing of his fingers betrays Clint’s helpless frustration despite his outward casualness.

“She’ll be fine. She’ll come in when she wants to.” Phil touches a forearm reassuringly and it has the effect of calming and relaxing Clint's terseness.

“She also said HYDRA is still in town.”

That has the effect of stiffening Phil’s stance instantly and the sharpness in his eyes intensifies. “Are you sure about that?”

“Positive. Steve heard it too.”

Without raising his voice, but it still manages to cut across the windy platform to where Steve and Sam are and they break off their discussion, Phil says, “Welcome back, Captain Rogers. Please make your way to the usual meeting room on level ninety-two for your debrief.”

Steve’s eyes widen as it dawns on him that Phil Coulson, Acting Director of whatever is left of SHIELD, is standing right next to his dead and recently appointed boyfriend. He starts taking broad steps towards them, hurriedly saying, “What, wait a minute. I have to take B somewhere safe first. Tony--”

“Stark is not in the Tower presently,” Phil interrupts coolly, moving to stand in Steve's path, while Clint has thrown an arm around B's shoulder, making him tense minutely but Clint is also Nat’s friend so he allows the contact. Clint’s arm is lightly nudging him and he follows its direction because Steve’s happier with Sam in any case.

“Don’t worry, Cap. I have a plan.” Clint gives an increasingly frantic-looking Steve, who is trying to side-step an unyielding Coulson, a thumbs up as he leads B away into the aircraft hanger.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I optimistically imagined I could finish this by chapter 8 but looks like that's not going to happen, alas.
> 
> Plus background Clint/Phil, I can't help it, SHIELD husbands for the yay!


	7. Chapter 7

The moment he steps into the room, he knows it belongs to Steve. It’s large, spacious and immaculately neat. The living area is decorated stylishly, with vintage looking pieces, such as a gramophone and various art pieces on the wall. The lights are dimmed as Clint flicks a control located near the side wall of the door and he explains the lowered brightness is to cut down the energy usage.

“The city’s running tight as it is. We’re mostly on solar power inside the Tower and there’s a curfew for the rest. Lights only after six and off once the sun rises. Each household that applies has a monthly allocation of power they can use for whatever they want and once it’s gone, that’s it and they gotta wait for the next fresh batch. It’s not a failsafe system but it does help maintain the pressure on the main city generators to a manageable level.”

“This..is Steve’s room.” 

“Yup. How did you know? Tony designed it.”

“Can..smell him here.” And he can. Steve’s distinctive scent permeates the entire place. Then he points to what looks like a uniform, complete with a cowl with eyeholes, being worn by a mannequin in a corner. 

“And that too.” Emblazoned on the chest of the uniform, there is that same star that’s etched on Steve’s shield. And if he’s honest, he’s finding the mannequin standing at a corner disturbing to some extent. Its white, plastic head is devoid of any features and it reminds him of terrible things. Things like a metal table, his arm and Arnim Zola.

“You can smell…never mind, I don’t want to know,” Clint makes a face and walks over to the adjoining kitchenette to pour a glass of water from a jug. He sets it down when he remembers Steve has been away from his apartment suite for more than two weeks and the water’s probably just as old. “Sit why don’t you. I can’t think with you hunkering there.” 

He sits on the huge couch at the side of the room, as directed. It’s surprisingly comfortable.

“Don’t lose sleep over the dummy. Gives me the jeebies too. It was Tony’s idea. He got it from the Smithsonian for Steve’s birthday.” 

“So why..does Tony..want to kill me.”

Clint goes still. After a minute or so, he answers shortly. “Because of Pepper. She was his wife.”

It doesn’t take smarts to connect the dots even without Clint’s deliberate usage of grammar and since there’s no two ways to skirt the subject so he bluntly asks, “was she..killed? Infected?” 

“She was turning after being bitten so Tony shot her in the head to stop the process. He couldn’t stand to see her as one of them. Couldn’t hold out for a cure, didn’t believe it could happen in time for her. So she became a casualty of war.” In spite of the relatively casual manner he uses to reveal Pepper’s fate, there is regret and something close to sorrow on Clint’s face and B thinks Tony’s wife must have been someone extraordinary if it elicits such a reaction from someone who isn’t closely related to her. 

“And he..wants to kill me because she..died.” 

“It’s not you personally. It’s what you represent to him. What he lost and what he had done. Not to mention, the legions of undead out there trying to eat our guts and become the dominant master-race.” Clint takes up the glass again, inspecting the water closely once more. He swipes his tongue across teeth, considers momentarily before shrugging and takes a swig from the glass. “Tony was crazy about Pepper and she was worth being crazy about. Like how Steve is crazy about you. You don’t have to be jealous of Wilson, you know.”

“Not jealous,” he denies quickly and glances out towards the floor to ceiling glass windows, resolutely not thinking about the bright smile on Steve’s face as he greeted Sam on the air pad.

“Sure, whatever you say,” Clint looks unconvinced. “Just for your information, Steve doesn’t look at Sam the way he looks at you. Like he’s the brains eating zombie instead and he wants to gobble you right up, lock, stock and the whole barrel.” 

Now it’s his turn to give Clint a disbelieving stare. Steve likes him enough to kiss him, he’s sure since that has happened, but from the way Clint describes it, it sounds like...he searches his mind for the right word. Is it lust, desire, possibly even love? Does Steve _love_ him? Or he just enjoys kissing dead people with bionic arms.

Maybe he’s taking too long in his musings and he becomes conscious of the fact his gaze is still trained towards Clint’s direction when the man makes an uncomfortable shifting from one leg to the other. The slight motion breaks him out of his thoughts of exactly what he means to Steve.

“It’s just Steve, he exudes this aura of all-American wholesomeness that can’t be denied by some. Even Phil had a little crush on him, his childhood hero in the flesh and all that. You should have seen him when they thawed Steve outta the ice. He was all over the poor guy,” Clint sniggers.

“All..what?” He takes in what Clint said. That nondescript man on the air pad is like Sam too? All handsy and touchy with Steve? Is there a second spleen to be ripped out then?

“It’s fine. I’m not worried, it’s just a man crush he had. Kind of adorable really...do you know you’re growling and you’re freaking me out here.” B clears his throat quickly and looks irritated instead. He won’t rip Phil’s spleen out because he thinks he might get to like Clint. But Phil had better not touch Steve in his immediate vicinity once their debriefing is over.

“Anyway, Tony’s not here and lady luck's on our side because Jarvis isn’t monitoring the tower right now. Tony has him watching the coastal lines of NYC twenty four seven and it causes a massive load on whatever passes for Jarvis’s CPU. New York’s surrounded by water which is why it’s one of the last places standing but we still have to be vigilant. Let’s hope none of your ex-kind has watched Land of the Dead. You swim?” Clint looks expectantly at him. He hasn't tried swimming before but since an answer seems to be required so he just shakes his head.

“Unless it’s really shit in your face bad, Jarvis won’t know you’re here either. For the time being.”

He has no idea who is Jarvis but dismisses the person as not important to focus on the actual issue at hand. “So hiding is…a temporary thing until Tony finds me.”

“Steve says you’re becoming alive, right? Once that happens, and you’re one hundred percent homo sapiens once more, it won’t matter if Tony discovers you.”

B continues to fix his eyes on Clint who shifts some more. “That’s..your plan?”

“I didn’t say it was a good one. Look, Nat was the strategist among us, I’m really just very spectacular with a bow and some arrows. But that’s not all, my other plan is,” Clint pauses for dramatic emphasis. When it doesn’t have the desired effect from B, he carries on, undaunted, “you need a disguise.”

“No.”

“Yes. Think of it as camouflage.” Clint comes round from behind the bar counter and there’s something inexorable in his manner as he approaches. B shrinks slightly against the back of the couch. “First you have got to take a shower. Wait, don’t get all pissy on me, you don’t smell bad but you’re definitely a little musty. Like grandma’s quilts stored in the attic musty.” 

And that’s how B finds himself being hauled and maneuvered into Steve’s bathroom which is almost the size of the vault he had stayed in. Clint shuts the door as he eyes the thing in the middle of the place with misgiving; it looks too decadent and self-indulgent with steps leading to a sunken marble tub. While it’s clean, the bathtub doesn’t seem like it has been used for a while and water to fill it would probably be too much for such straitened times. 

He decides to use the shower facility instead since it’s not as intimidating as the bath. It’s a glass encased compartment with a shower head mounted to the wall and its simplicity comforts him. 

He’s getting into the shower when he takes in he’s still wearing his jeans and boots and being completely nude isn’t something he has practiced since becoming dead but it doesn’t look like he has a choice. 

It gets colder when his entire body is bared to the elements so he quickly gets into the shower and turns on the knob. When the first gush of water comes out of the shower head and heat touches his skin and soaks him through, he has a dazzling revelation descend upon him. A hot shower is as good as ingesting brains when he had been a full-fledged undead. 

He turns his face up against the spray and lets it sluice down, rivulets streaming past his body for at least fifteen minutes and more when the door cracks open and Clint yells, “You still alive in there?”

“I’m still dead,” he says and it’s not much as a joke goes but he hears Clint give a short bark of laughter. 

“Got some clothes, they’re Steve’s. You guys are about the same height so they should fit. Come out when you’re ready.”

B doesn’t feel ready to come out but it's inevitable he has to at some point. He’s about to turn off the knob when Clint shouts again.

“Did you use the shampoo?”

Right. He reaches for a bottle on a nearby glass rack bolted to the wall and it should be what he’s looking for since a mass of foamy suds appear upon his hair when he rubs it in. The scent of it is sharp and minty and a sense memory suddenly comes back to him, of a hot summer day and sucking on a sweet. It’s indistinct and imperfect and doesn't give a clue whatsoever to his past, as with whatever memories he has regained. It's frustrating but there's nothing he can do to make himself have recall that actually tells him something concrete.

When he’s done and rinsed off, dried with a fluffy towel, he sees the pile of clothes at the door, put there by Clint. There’s a pair of jeans, a long sleeved v-neck knit sweater in a neutral grey color since his metal arm wouldn't fit through normal sleeves. Even a black boxer brief is included. All look freshly laundered and it’s more than a little strange to be putting them on since they’re Steve’s. They smell like him too and it’s like he’s wearing Steve next to his skin. He still misses his hoodie and heaves a sigh at the thought of the beloved and shredded piece of clothing he left behind.

He comes out of the bathroom and Clint beckons him over to the kitchen top. He pats a high chair and says, “Hop on.”

“Why.” 

“You need a haircut.”

“Why.”

“Because Tony’s likely to use one of those repulsor beams in his suit to obliterate you if he finds out you’re cozying up to Steve right inside his own house. We’re trying to prevent that from happening. And to accomplish that mission, you have got to be able to pass for a human and not two quarters of aaaargh, I’m a flesh-eating former person. The whole grunge rocker image you have going is great, you're just missing eyeliner. You definitely stand out in a crowd but until Bruce has a looksie at you, standing out is what we would like to not have.” Clint holds up the pair of gleaming scissors and snips it open and shut for emphasis. “C’mon, you’ll look fantastic after I’m done, I promise.”

Still not entirely convinced, he slowly goes forward and sits on a high bar stool and Clint right away goes to work. He can see damp locks of black hair flying down in whirls around him to lie around the floor and if his hair doesn’t grow again even if his metamorphosis is complete, then he’s going to have short hair for the rest of his natural lifespan.

Clint doesn’t quite flourish when he’s finished but he does emit a hum of satisfaction as he steps back to survey his handiwork. “Vidal Sasson I’m not but as promised, I have delivered. Here, have a look yourself.” 

He passes a hand mirror that has been placed on the counter top to B who takes it with uneasiness. The few times he has caught a glimpse of himself post-death stage was via badly reflected surfaces, through a shop window or from a pool of scummy water on the ground. An actual mirror’s different. It’s too clear, too lucid. 

He’s staring at himself and his hair has indeed become much shorter, over his ears, with the front of his fringe flopping to a side. It leaves his features exposed with his chin square and cheekbones sharp and defined. The eyes are a pale color, somewhere between light grey and blue, and they gaze unblinkingly as he takes in everything else. Except for the faint veins patterning his skin and neck, he really could pass for a fully alive breather again. 

He’s unsure if it’s his imagination as he stretches his neck upwards and it looks as though even those indications of his deadness are somewhat faded, not as a prominent blue as they had been.

Clint sees him examining them and mentions, “There’s stuff we can use to hide those. When I was in the circus, yes, an actual circus, a good base and foundation can go a long way even under spotlights and I can’t believe I’m saying something like this right now.” He lays down the scissors and starts brushing the stray hairs to one side with his shoe. “Steve can sweep this up later.”

“Thank..you.” 

“Yeah, don’t mention it. It’s all for the greater good, right.” Clint flashes a fleeting grin. “And I better go tell Steve where you’re stashed or else he’ll be breaking level ninety-two and Phil apart. I'll really like my husband intact for what I've got planned tonight. Just stay here, alright, and don’t go anywhere.”

He doesn’t like the idea of being confined in a new place without having all routes of escape accessible to him but gives an evasive shrug since Clint evidently won’t leave until he does something that signifies some sort of implied agreement. 

The suite becomes quieter when Clint goes out so he looks around before going over to the windows and a panorama is laid out in front of him. It’s not without its damages; as high this tower is, the swaths of destruction with blackened buildings and burnt out barriers are visible to him. Sundown is beginning, the lights that start shining through windows below are noticeably minuscule, dotted here and there in the landscape, and all within a sphere of maybe twelve kilometers or so. The outlying areas are absolutely devoid of luminosity and it makes sense. Gathering survivors together in a contained area makes them easier to manage and organize. Of course if deadies ever enter this city and into the populated perimeter, it would be a buffet feast for them.

As he stands there, he's steadily aware of his body growing lethargic yet again. That, by now, familiar drowsiness creeping up upon him, perhaps brought on the deliciously heated shower. Being a breather seems to mean a lot of sleeping. 

His bare feet pads across the carpet, toes scrunching pleasantly against thick filaments. The couch has proven to be as comfortable as its appearance suggests and it won’t hurt if he shut his eyes for a few minutes. Tony can kill him later.

There are no dreams this time and he wakes up because the couch dips as if someone is getting on it. He shifts and peels open eyelids to see Steve’s gorgeous face above and gazing down at him. The room is completely dark now, lit only by a small table lamp nearby on a stand. Arms bracket both sides of his head and they gaze at each other for a time before Steve’s body settles next to him. 

He’s still not talking, and the look in his eyes make B start to wonder if Clint’s observation about how Steve wants to eat him up might actually have some truth to it.

He explains, a little tentatively. “Got a haircut. It’s a..disguise.” 

“You look amazing.” The timbre of Steve's voice is pitched a little lower, huskier, than usual and B feels almost anticipatory, like he’s waiting for a really good chunk of brain after Nat’s done with her share when they had hunted together. 

“Were you jealous of Sam?” 

“No. Yes. May..be?”

The glint in those blue eyes intensifies as Steve asserts to him, “Sam doesn’t make me want to do this.” Saying so, he leans down and small little kisses are placed along the side of B’s neck, right below the jaw. He turns his head slightly, letting Steve have unrestricted access to do as he wants. Then one of those kisses becomes a definite bite and an involuntary whine is forced out of him as a fold of flesh at his collarbone is being sucked and worried between blunt teeth. 

Despite his anticipation, it’s still startling to be bitten thus and he’s supposed to be the flesh consuming deadie here. “Are you going..to eat me?”

Sounding distracted, Steve mumbles into his skin, words coming out more or less coherently between nips and licks although he has the inkling they’re not quite on the same subject matter. “Don’t think you’re ready for that yet.” 

The ensuing kiss on his mouth is awkward initially due to their prone positions on the couch but it doesn’t deter Steve who gets up to move them both until they’re lying flushed together, chest against chest, and his knees lifts to bracket Steve’s hips tightly. Once they got the angle right, Steve lowers his head again and it feels to B like he’s trying his best to eat and turn him inside out with the kisses they’re exchanging.

Clint had mentioned how Steve radiates wholesomeness but there’s nothing respectable in the way he's ardently kissing him, or how hands reach underneath the sweater he has on to skim across skin. Eventually the sweater is pushed up to his chest and he makes a movement to take it off completely but is stopped by Steve who loosely encircles and pins his wrists against the couch.

“You’re wearing my clothes,” Steve murmurs directly into the curved shell of his right ear, when he has to break the kiss off because his heart is unmistakably and erratically pounding, trying its best to pump normally sluggish blood through the rest of his body. 

He’s about to ask if that’s okay with him when Steve is flicking the button of the borrowed jeans he’s wearing. While that’s as far as they go, the jeans stay on, hands do slip under the now partially opened waistband to palm his hips and thumbs start sliding to rub exposed hipbones under flesh in matching, rhythmic strokes. 

He exhales a soft whimper when the thumbs press simultaneously. An especially fierce shudder rocks all the way through his body and his heart literally gives a jump inside his chest cavity. His fingers tighten on Steve’s back, digging into muscles, and they only relax their hold when the spasm eventually passes. 

Steve must have recognized what happened since he quickly draws himself to kneel up, astride B’s hips.

“Did you just come?” he’s asking, with some wonder and awe. 

“Come?” 

“I mean, did you have an orgasm?”

“I don’t know.” He pats himself between his legs to check. The material is dry as a bone still and his cock remains flaccid. With no active blood flow, it’s not feasible for him to achieve an erection. He hasn’t had one since he came back. Deadies aren’t known to be sexual beings unless it’s the act of consuming flesh which he guesses does excite them to something akin to eager sexual pleasure. 

“It felt really..good,” he offers as Steve starts to look troubled again, the furrow appearing on his forehead once more. 

Steve huffs a deep sigh. “God only knows if I’m doing something irreparable to your body, even if it’s giving a possible really good orgasm to you.” He glances at B, and a shadow of that earlier blistering want returns to reflect in his eyes for a split second. His hands reach downwards once more but it’s only to button up the jeans, pull and adjust the sweater, and run fingers through rumpled hair. Even though B can do these things himself but it seems to give the human some time to think. 

In his ministrations, something catches Steve’s attention and he lifts B’s hand to examine it closely under the dim light. 

“It’s healing.” 

He sits upright to take a look for himself and the savage bite he had sustained from the fight this morning with his own kind has almost completely healed, not just healing as Steve said. Formerly ravaged and torn flesh has knitted together at the seams and there’s a faint, puckered line to indicate where shredded skin had been. 

“It has to be the serum Zola gave you,” Steve is pointing out with renewed interest over his physiology. “It’s definitely accelerated your healing process. Nat said the serum you have is a variation of what I have and it could be, in some way, your version could be the reagent to being fully alive instead. We have to get Bruce to take a look. Tomorrow.”

He’s only half-listening because he’s becoming aware of an ache rising up from deep inside his stomach. It’s insistent, aggravating and he knows this sensation only too well. 

Cutting in the midst of Steve’s speculations, he mutters hesitantly, “I’m..hungry.”


	8. Chapter 8

“Hungry for people?” Steve asks with a certain degree of caution, after a short silence. 

There is anxiousness but none of the to be expected disgust or revulsion coming from a human after a deadie admits to being hungry, presumably for the former's flesh. B wants to reassure Steve he won’t be rampaging down the city streets, tearing breathers into bite-sized pieces. While he’s reasonably sure his boyfriend is not going to hunt down any breathers for him to eat, he already knows he wouldn't want him too either. He would rather starve to become a pile of rickety bones than force Steve to make a choice between him and his kind.

Still, even though he has resolved not to eat a breather again, Steve’s question catches him off-guard. He’s always eaten breathers since becoming a deadie. That’s why the dead try so hard to cling to whatever pathetic shreds of reanimated life they have left. 

His uncertainty must have been plain as Steve hurries on. “Hear me out, okay? Since your body is changing, reviving somehow, maybe your cravings would follow suit and revert to human appetites again. Can you stomach something--” Steve pauses and a pained look comes over his face, “and that was a bad choice of words, wasn’t it.” 

There’s a little croak bubbling from his throat and it erupts forth. It takes a few seconds to realize he just laughed. 

Steve seems electrified by the fact that he has emitted a rather rusty chuckle, as if being able to laugh is an ability remarkable and quite wonderful for him. He cups the side of B's face, stroking the curve of a cheekbone gently.

He leans across the gap between them as they sit on the couch and, wordlessly, they share a slow kiss, not as intense as their previous ones had been when it felt like they were trying to bite into each other's insides, but there's a level of leisurely, sweet familiarity that's comforting. And it might be more than a little incredible to theorize perhaps he’s becoming alive all over again due to Steve’s kisses, B still presses an involuntary smile against the lips on his, at the idea.

When they break apart, he replies, “I’ll give your kind of food a shot. Can’t..hurt, right?”

The wide smile gracing Steve’s countenance is blinding. “It’s almost morning, I can scramble you some eggs for breakfast. I think I should have some left from the last rationing. Or would you like them fried? And toast?”

“Scrambled. No toast.” The notion of trying to gulp down bread, desiccated and dry like a hollowed corpse, makes him a little nauseous. Eggs, on the other hand, he thinks he can tolerate enough to try.

“Coming right up.”

Steve jumps from the couch immediately, brimming with hopeful cheerfulness. He bursts into action, heading towards the kitchenette and starts to rummage through cabinets for the eggs and a frying pan. It’s not long before he finds what he wants and has the stove heated and is already cracking eggs into a bowl. B remains seated, cross-legged, propping his chin on one palm, and begins to wonder if he should start regretting his decision. 

The eggs cooked by Steve are golden yellow, very fluffy and a heap of it is steaming on the plate before him. Its appearance and smell is enormously different from grisly chunks of meat torn from still quivering bodies with the iron tang of blood sharp and coppery fresh in the mouth. 

At the remembrance of his previous feeding routine, he has warring senses of abrupt repugnance, accompanied by a renewed sense of famished need. He mulls over the white, round plate of scrambled eggs for a long moment.

“Salt?” Steve holds two small glass containers aloft in his hands, one has tiny white grains inside while the other has just as minuscule dark particles. “Or do you prefer pepper?”

He takes them both and carefully shakes the particles out onto the pile of fragmented eggs in equal measures. He has no idea what the condiments will do to his changing palate but on the other hand, what could they possibly do? Revert him back to being deader? 

He picks up a fork and with Steve looking on encouragingly, he starts to chew after depositing a mass into his mouth. The texture is spongy and yielding, not unlike brain matter actually, and he masticates a few times thoughtfully before swallowing. The part of him which still retains the meat eating deadie is baffled and confused by this bizarre new victual but the mush slides down his gullet easily enough. He waits and when he doesn't retch up what he has ingested, he takes that as a promising sign to take another bite. And another. 

On the whole, the flavor of the eggs is incredibly bland and insipid to his tongue, even with pepper and salt added, and the flatness is not due to Steve’s cooking or lack of seasoning. It's edible but it's not enjoyable. His appetite is too used and conditioned to breather meat as his prime nourishment. Suddenly switching to human food would take some getting used to.

When he finishes eating, dawn has arrived and pale light is streaming in through the windows. Steve switches off the only light source in the room and he returns to stand across the counter where B has been consuming the eggs.

“Good?” he asks, trying to be casual about it and not noticeably succeeding. The hopeful optimism on his face has not altered and it only brightens when he sees the plate is empty.

The deadie part of him is petulant and decidedly exasperated that the meal just eaten had not been raw guts, salty gristle, or pliable and soft brains that it’s familiar with. But the predatory ache inside his stomach that makes him want to hunt, kill, feed has significantly lessened. 

“They..seem to be staying down.” 

“I can put in a ration request for some beef slabs. We can try steak next time?” 

He nods in agreement to the diffident suggestion. Even if it’s animal and not human meat, any kind of flesh definitely appeals to the deadie portion still remaining in him. And the prospect of having another meal cooked especially for him by Steve does suffuse him with something close to satisfaction. The thought that he can be happy here, in this new place, springs into mind. Then he recalls Tony who will be killing him once he discovers his presence here. Nothing's perfect, he philosophies with a sigh. 

Steve is gazing at him quizzically but before he can asks why the sigh, a loud ding echos and the elevator door to the suite slides open and Clint is stalking out from the opening. In one hand, he’s carrying a white colored binder file and judging by his expression, it doesn’t look like he’s here for a social call.

He walks over to where they are seated and slams the file he's carrying down on the table. “Tony’s back. Phil and Wilson headed him off for his debrief so we’re still okay for the time being. Bad news is Bruce isn’t here. He’s been staying over at the free clinic for the last few days. I don’t want to use the communicator to apprise him of the situation in case Jarvis's listening. We have to go out to the clinic if we want him to take a look at B.”

“Alright, we do that then. We can go right now. The sooner the better.” Steve gives a nod and half rises from his perch on the chair.

“Hang on there, Cap. There’s more.” Clint points to the file he brought in. “Phil checked it up after you mentioned B’s real name during the debriefing and everything else Nat told you. He thought the name sounded familiar. It's all very hush hush stuff even among us spies, but we have a confirmation on one James Buchanan Barnes.”

Steve stiffens at once and B squints at the binder lying on the table surface. There are bold black words neatly printed across the front which states ‘Classified’ with a stylized eagle pictured beneath it. Right at the bottom, further words declare ‘Security level 10 or above required’. 

A sheaf of white sheets has half fallen out of the folder when Clint unceremoniously dumped it, as well as the square edge of a thick-looking piece of paper. He looks closer and it’s really a black and white photo print. He reaches with his hand to draw it out completely and his attention becomes fully riveted to what’s on it. 

It’s clear whoever took the photo did it inadvertently as everything in the shot is off-focus. Despite the blurriness, the man who is photographed from the waist up in it, is still arresting to the viewer. He’s dressed entirely in black and half of his face is covered by what looks more like a muzzle than a mask, leaving only the upper portion including eyes visible. His longish hair is parted in the center and falls to frame either side of the muzzle and there is a tangibility apparent even through a two-dimensional surface that this man in the photo is deadly.

And his eyes are what stand out the most. They’re utterly lifeless, nothing contained within that defines the spark of life that belongs to a breather. Yet B doesn't get the feeling this photo was snapped when the world was over-run by the revived dead. Though the man’s eyes are seemingly unresponsive, he was still very much alive in the physical sense when this photo was taken.

There’s a muted silence as the two men watch him examine the photo. Finally, Steve says, “That’s you, B.” 

He breaks his scrutiny of the picture, away from those lifeless eyes peering from above the muzzle to see that Steve has the most apprehensive and concerned expression plastered upon his face, since their first meeting.

“Yeah,” he simply replies. It's him in the photo, he's aware. Whatever Clint is going to say next, he’s prepared to accept it. 

“It’s all inside, every little detail SHIELD could gather. The Winter Soldier he’s called. He was the number one go to guy from HYDRA’s Soviet arm for all their nastiest type of wetworks. That red star, it’s to stand for good ole Mother Russia.” Clint taps a spot on his arm to mirror the same location of B’s star. “I heard of the Soldier when I was first recruited. He was supposed to be an urban legend made up to scare baby field agents into wetting their pants because no one has ever seen him operate his jobs in the flesh and survived. Only thing is, he’s real. SHIELD has documented all his confirmed kills.” 

Clint flips open the binder file to a page where a list of names filled its entirety. And there are a lot of names.

“The Soldier first appeared on the scene shortly after world war two ended and he has remained active until we had our little undead infestation crisis. Although there were long, and like really long, we’re talking ten, twenty years here, when he just fell off the radar.”

“I..don’t get it. How does James Barnes tie in? It’s not a Russian..name.” He looks to Clint for confirmation since he has undeniably read through the binder and all that it contains.

“Fuck, okay, it gets worse. The Winter Soldier is confirmed without a doubt to be Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, United States Army. Captured by Johann Schmidt’s men in nineteen forty-three. His last known whereabouts was in Schmidt’s Austrian base. He had been held there with other prisoners of war. Apparen--”

“That’s not possible,” Steve denies vehemently. He slaps his palm against the granite top of the table, causing B to start slightly and even Clint to gape a little because there’s an uncharacteristic hard edge, bordering on anger, in his voice. “I know which base you’re talking about. And it was burnt to the ground after all the prisoners escaped.”

“Hey, I'm just telling it as it's reported." Clint shrugs. "The way I see it, Barnes was one of their prized experiments under Arnim Zola and Zola successfully escaped the base during your rescue attempt. He very likely hauled B along with him. To continue whatever they were doing. And according to the file, they did a lot of other things to you, not just the cybernetic arm replacement. There’s whole chapters devoted to suspected multiple brain wipes and cryogenic testing which would explain the disappearances over the years and your lack of aging,” he concludes uneasily. 

"It's not suspected. They did wipe B's memories when he was alive. It's what that chair in the vault was for." Steve's palm on the table top clenches into a fist, bone knuckles rolling white and stretched beneath thin skin. "He doesn't remember, not because of the virus, but because of what they did to him."

Increasing horror is dawning on Steve’s features and the sight of it is so palpable and strange that it makes B stumbles badly over his speech, like he used to, in his fear. “Ste..ve? Don't..don't..look like..that.”

His breather past and association with HYDRA has been laid bare and it’s as sordid and despicable as he thought it would be. The men who took him would never have used him for anything good. Nothing as noble as sacrificing oneself to save the world like Steve did. He already has been prepared for this likelihood ever since he found out HYDRA had ‘improved’ him for their purposes so he’s not greatly surprised.

But Steve is still sweetly idealistic in so many ways and although he knows B had killed and eaten breathers, the impetus that drove him to do so had been out of a necessity to survive, arising from his uncontrollable undead state. Actively murdering breathers on HYDRA’s orders is a different case when all's said and done, and B is terrified of his impending reaction to this aspect of his history.

He hangs his head down, wishing he didn’t let Clint cut his hair earlier. The length of it could have helped to hide Steve’s evident loathing directed at him.

“Oh God,” Steve is slowly whispering. “Everything that happened to you. It’s _my_ fault.”

He looks up, baffled. He has been expecting recrimination for his ugly deeds as a breather assassin. He wasn’t prepared to hear that coming from Steve.

“I was there. I was touring with the USO in Europe when I got wind that an American unit had been captured by Red Skull’s forces. They were being held in Austria and I was so near. I couldn't stand by and do nothing anymore so I infiltrated the base and managed to free the prisoners from the place they were kept. We mounted an escape and I thought I got everyone out. No, I _assumed_ everyone escaped.” 

The distress from Steve is so strong that he can barely look at B who has stood up to stand in front of him. He repeats softly, “I made a stupid mistake and it cost you everything.”

B’s fingers grips a forearm until it must have been painful to an extent but Steve ignores the touch. B shakes his head, once, twice, just as vehemently, denying Steve's self-imposed guilt with this physical action. Whatever that has happened to him, it’s not his responsibility to shoulder, and he has to understand that. 

“I asked Natasha Romanov before who killed you. I wanted to find the one who did it. Because you matter but someone didn’t think you did.” Steve makes a funny little in-drawn gasp, as if he’s struggling to breathe. “So turns out I was that person all along.”

“Don’t be a,” he hunts for the appropriate word and comes up with, “punk. You being at..the base was chance. And I didn’t die then, did I.”

“If I had looked, searched harder at the base, I could have saved you back then. And you wouldn’t have gone through hell to become this Winter Soldier and died being him. You could have returned home safely as James Barnes with your memories and your arm intact. B, you would have been a hero.”

“And I wouldn’t have..rescued your miserable ass from being chowed down by a bunch of..dead folks in an alleyway,” B argues heatedly in return and punches a fist at Steve's arm angrily. “The past can’t be changed. And even if I could, I..wouldn’t. If changing the past means not meeting you in that alley, then it can stay..the fuck it is.”

He's seized into a fierce embrace when he finishes saying what he has to say and he goes into it willingly, gripping his own arms around Steve's back. The side of his head, above his ear, is kissed and the words “I’m so sorry,” are silently being mouthed into his hair again and again.

“I want eggs.”

Steve draws back. “Could you repeat that? I thought I heard you say you wanted eggs?”

“Yes. If you’re that sorry, make it up to me. You have to..cook for me, every single..damn day. I want eggs, and steak and other breather food.” He jabs a finger into Steve’s chest for added emphasis. “You’re not getting off so lightly, Rogers.”

A small helpless gulp, almost a laugh but not quite there yet, escapes Steve at B's ultimatum and Clint, who has hitherto remained valiantly silent, speaks with a lifted eyebrow. “I think you’re supposed to say I do now, Cap. And you may kiss the bride.”

The last remark earns him a fearsome scowl from B. “How many..fucking times do I have to say it. I'm not the dame.”

“My bad.” Clint waves a hand in quick apology. “Fine, Steve can be the bride instead.”

“B, I'm—” Steve begins and whatever he’s about to say is lost as Sam’s voice crackles out from the region of Clint’s jeans pocket. Clint gives a little jump as if he's forgotten about the device before pulling the communicator that looks like a highly advanced mobile out, and Sam is urgently saying through the mouthpiece.

_/Stark knows and he’s on his way. ETA thirty seconds. Get the dead guy out now/_

“How the hell did he find out?” Clint demands brusquely even as Steve has strode across the room and is already unstrapping his shield where it has been attached to the mannequin wearing the full Captain America uniform regalia. 

“We don't have time. I’ll talk to him, he’ll stand down. B, make sure you stay behind me at all times,” Steve says with determination, moving to stand in front of his boyfriend.

He glares at Steve with narrowed eyes and tests his metal arm instead, swinging it up and down. His previously dislocated shoulder has completely healed, just like his mangled hand, no twinge or even a remnant of a cramp to inconvenience his movements right now. Whatever Zola has done to him, he can’t begrudge his rapid healing ability as part of his improvements, in dire situations like this.

_/A little Jarvis told him. Sneaky AI bastard still kept a sentient piece of himself here in the Tower and from the moment Steve’s zombie pal's foot touched the airpad, he bloody well knew/_

“Where’s Phil?” 

There's a slight hesitation before Sam speaks again. _/He's down. Stark knocked him out. But he’s fine, just stunned/_

“Sonofabitch,” Clint swears lowly, livid at hearing of his husband’s hurt at Tony’s hand. He has left his bow in his own room but there’s a gun tucked in his waistband of his jeans. He pulls it out while uncocking the safety in a single, fluid motion.

Steve quickly interjects, holding an open palm at Clint. “Don’t lose your head too. Tony’s not been in his right mind ever since Pepper died, we know this. But he’s still Tony, he’s still an Avenger and he’s still our friend. He’ll listen.”

“Whatever,” Clint mutters but the barrel of the gun stays unerringly steady, pointed at the only access to Steve’s suite which is the elevator door.

They've neglected to remember the flight capability built into Tony’s suit and belatedly, they turn when they hear the humming resonance of propellers and whistling air being forced out at unimaginably high speeds, outside of Steve’s three large, floor to ceiling glass panel windows.

Clint ducks behind the kitchen bar counter just in time. Steve instantly drags B down to a crouch, both taking shelter behind the shield, as the windows fold inwards before exploding in an earth-shattering blast that causes their ears to ring and hundreds of wicked-sharp glass shards to fly towards them in a meteor storm.

The hard sound of glass impacting on the shield’s surface lasts only a few seconds. When the thunder subsides, a familiar voice is talking.

“Heeeeeere’s Johnny,” Tony drawls, his faceplate flipping open to reveal a visage twisted almost unrecognizable by rage. 

Slowly standing up behind the counter, Clint’s eyes widen as he takes in the sight of his teammate clad in the distinctive red and gold iron armored suit hovering outside the utterly obliterated windows along with one substantial chunk of cement wall which is now missing. He remarks to no-one in particular, “Oh shit.”


	9. Chapter 9

The faceplate stays lifted and when Tony doesn’t do anything further, beyond creating an explosion that took out half of the apartment suite moments ago, Steve and B uncurl themselves from the crouch behind the shield to stand up. Glass crunches beneath their feet and he’s not wearing any shoes. 

Steve notices his shoeless state. “Your feet. Don’t move.” 

It’s only shallow cuts and whatever sting he is experiencing from the multitude of tiny slashes is manageable. He’s been through much worse and he’s more curious in getting his first look at the latest Avenger who wants to kill him very dead.

There are shadows underneath the brown eyes, and the cheeks are slightly sunken, as if he has not had a good sleep or eaten well, in quite some time. The dark hair growing on the upper lip and around the chin is getting a little unkempt, straggly as a matter of fact, but the untidiness doesn’t detract from the awareness that Tony Stark is still a remarkably good-looking human.

Attractive his appearance may be, even though he is momentarily unmoving and not speaking, he’s gazing upon B with animosity and outright disgust is written all over the clever, sharp features. 

“Tony?” Steve calls out guardedly to the man in the iron suit, still hovering airborne outside the destroyed windows.

“When Jarvis said there’s one of them inside the Tower, _my_ Tower, I couldn’t believe my ears.” The flat, conversational quality of Tony’s voice is at odds with the aura of murderous rage he’s projecting from every pore of his iron-encased body. “I thought, I actually thought, ‘Jarvis finally has got something wrong’. But see, Jarvis never get things wrong because I created him not to.”

He unhurriedly descends lower and glides into the inside of the apartment, through the gaping space where the windows used to be, until he lands and is standing a few feet from the edge, facing Steve and B directly. Steve tenses and continues to hold his shield up, maintaining the defensive barrier between them and Tony.

“Rogers, you must be having the mother of all dry spells ever since you got thawed out from the ice and the situation with zombies overrunning the planet probably didn’t make things better for you. But fucking stiffs now? That’s low, even for you.” Somehow, despite the, or perhaps precisely because of the monotone being used, the viciousness of Tony’s words is all the more unsettling. “So necrophilia always has been a thing for you or a recently acquired taste?” 

B can’t help it but he finds his lips peeling back in a snarl and he’s baring teeth at Stark. He makes himself stop, presses his lips back together and balls his hands into fists at his sides instead. Steve is still standing in front of him and he doesn’t like it that Steve feels he has to be protected like this. He should be the one looking out for Steve instead.

Refusing to be riled by Tony’s spiteful indictment, Steve replies, just as levelly. “B isn’t a walking dead. Not anymore. He’s changing, he's becoming human again.”

“Wow, the stiff has a name. Delightful.”

“He’s James Buchanan Barnes.”

“I don’t know why you think I would give a shit what that thing’s called but what I do know it’s not going to be here much longer. Step aside, Rogers. Or don’t. Either way, it’s fine by me.” Tony stretches out one hand and there is a dazzling circle of luminosity centered in the middle of the palm. The disc emits a high-pitched whine that increases as the mini-sun glows even brighter. 

“Stark, have you fucking lost your mind?” Clint says, furiously, trying to divert Tony’s attention. He’s maintaining his vantage point from behind the kitchenette counter. His hand holding the gun is propped on the crook of an elbow and it’s aimed straight at Tony’s face inside the helmet of his suit. 

Tony instantly lifts his other palm to point it at Clint. “You going to shoot me, Barton?” he enquires smoothly, without his line of sight ever leaving Steve and B.

“You hurt Phil.”

“Yeah, sorry about that but Agent got in the way. I just grazed him a little. He’ll be okay. I left Wilson to look after him.”

Clint’s wrath flares white-hot at Tony’s casual mention of Coulson’s injury. He grits through clenched teeth. “Fly off, Stark. Or I won’t be responsible if a bullet gets lodged in that skull of yours.” 

“That’s really funny, har har. A bullet’s not going to penetrate the suit.” Tony laughs shortly, humorlessly. “However, on the other hand, I can’t say the same for your head.” For emphasis, he increases the repulsor that is directed towards Clint, until the whine grows into a thin, high whistle.

“Tony, Clint, stop it, the two of you,” Steve rebukes sharply. “We’re a team and we don’t try to kill each other.”

“Then I’ll just kill the stiff. Problem solved.” 

A lance of intense light discharges out from the circle of Tony’s palm even before he finishes his sentence, and it hurtles towards B who impulsively throws his own metal hand out to intercept.

Except Steve has moved his shield to cover him in a blink and the repulsor beam hits the adamantium surface, the force of the energy blast causing him to take a small step backwards. The beam bounces off where it hits a nearby wall and a fist size hole appears on it, charred and smoking around the edges.

Tony is about to let off a second beam when a loud retort reverberates and the circular repulsor shatters in an eruption of metallic bits. 

Clint’s hand is rock steady as he shifts the trajectory of the gun slightly to target the remaining repulsor on Tony’s other palm now. “That’s not your head but it’s close enough,” he informs evenly.

“Jesus wept, Barton.” Tony shakes his fist and a small, mashed up pellet tinkles out of the ruin of his repulsor disc. “You know how hard it is to make these things?” He utters an irritated rumble and faintly scowls at Clint who glares in return, unrepentent.

Taking advantage of the lull in Tony’s focus on B, Steve tries again to talk to his teammate. 

“Just listen to me. Inside B’s body, something in his blood, may have the answer we need. What Bruce has been searching for, a cure to the virus finally. Think about what this could mean to everyone. I know you're hurting bad over Pepper, but you can’t punish the rest of the world for what happened to her. And B isn't the one who infected her; it’s not his fault. Even for all the dead out there, you think any of them wanted to become what they have become? Mindless, rotting corpses that can only remember how to feed."

At the mention of Pepper, Tony hunches his shoulders in a defensive gesture. He turns away from Clint to face Steve and there is a soul-searing amalgamation gathered within the brown eyes, comprising of grief, anger, bitterness and complete wretchedness, at the evocation of his dead wife. Despite what he has said to Steve earlier, and actively wanting to exterminate him, B feels a measure of sympathy welling up for Tony Stark, at the exposure of such naked mental damage over what he has lost.

“You don't speak about Pepper to me. Don't you even dare. You didn’t love her. Not like I did.”

“You’re right. She wasn't my wife but she was a friend. And Pepper wouldn’t want you to become this way. If there is a cure, she would want you to find it.”

Sensing Tony’s unexpected indecisiveness, Steve goes on, “We just need Bruce to check B out and we can find if a cure is possible. Tony, alright? We don’t have to do this.” He lowers his shield and leans it against his leg, holding up empty hands, to express his sincerity. 

At Steve’s signal of laying down arms, Tony draws in a gulp, half sob and half chortle. “A cure, huh. From that thing?” He narrows his eyes at B musingly. 

“I don’t know. Maybe. But there’s a good probability B’s blood will give us the answer for a treatment to the virus. We can’t give up on any chances left to us.” 

Behind Steve, B knits his eyebrows together, frowning. Stark isn’t his comrade so he doesn’t think he should interfere with Steve’s strategies to soothe his volatile teammate, but it shouldn’t have been that easy to talk down a man who is so consumed with loathing towards the dead and still plainly sick with anguish over his wife’s unhappy fate. Even Clint has lowers his gun somewhat after Tony remains quiet and outwardly meditative for the next few minutes. The high powered whine of the repulsor dwindles to a placid buzz.

That’s why he’s the only one not caught off-guard when Stark declares with unnatural composure. “Rogers. Tell me this. Pepper’s already dead and she's not coming back, I made sure of that. So what do I need a cure for?” 

And Tony draws his arm to expel a beam from his remaining repulsor at Steve before anyone present can react. 

Without needing to consider his action, B shoves Steve out of the way and receives the impact of the blast full on. The clout of it is enough to wallop him off his feet and flings him backwards across the room to smash against the wall behind with a resounding thump. The breath is knocked out of him and he drops to a knee to wheeze like an old human with asthma as his heart pumps fitfully, along with extreme discomfort rolling through his nervous system. From the moment he has received the blow, he knows it isn’t a killing shot. Stark had meant to incapacitate or stun Steve, not kill him. But it still hurts like a bitch.

Steve has surged to his feet at once, but Tony is faster and he flies past him. His right arm with the one remaining repulsor is stretched and fixed at B, gearing for another blast, when Clint shoots it unerringly, his aim true and devastatingly accurate. The repulsor disintegrates into small fragments but it doesn’t stop Tony who continues on his path until he reaches B and grabs his waist to hoist him up.

He clenches his fist and drives it down towards Stark’s shoulder with all his strength mustered. There is a short howl of pain issuing from inside the closed faceplate and the armor dents in slightly. The arms still do not let go and continues to squeeze tighter until B pants in renewed distress.

“Tony, don’t do it, let him go,” Steve says fiercely, priming his body and shield for a strike, but he holds back for fear of causing more hurt to B.

“Don’t do what? This?” Stark questions. The armor suit roars to life as he lifts up with B still held prisoner in his arms and they tear across the room at an unbelievably reckless course of flight within a confined space. They’re heading straight for the wide open fissure in the apartment wall, and it bursts upon him in an intense flare of fear, that Stark intends to drop him like a stone once they’re outside the Tower as his chosen method of execution.

Steve would never seize his teammate in time to stop whatever he’s planning. B has only seconds remaining and he reaches low with his hand where there’s a glowing round disk in the middle of Stark’s chest and he punches it. His angle is awkward, they’re too close together, and he can’t put as much weight behind the blow as he wants. 

But it’s enough to make Stark lose control. They crash to the floor together and B feels the hold around him slacken. He manages to get a knee between them to kick hard and free himself. His kick causes the iron suit to careen backwards and him to tumble over and over, towards the gone windows. Hands desperately scrape across broken concrete and glass but Stark’s flight was too fast and he’s unable to get purchase to stop his momentum.

Steve hurls himself across the distance, their fingertips managing to just graze each other’s, and screams his name as he goes over the edge and falls.

Vertigo is instantaneous. His body is plummeting, the sound of air whistling past his ears is like a train engine going at full throttle, and the sensation of weightlessness and falling is both unimaginably terrifying and shocking.

Even with his undead and augmented physique, he’ll never survive a descent of this magnitude and his mind goes blank as the dark chrome exterior of Stark Tower burns by his retinas. He closes his eyes. A sudden violent jolt happens; his body does a jerk and a jump. Inexplicably, he has stopped succumbing to gravity. And there’s a distinct sound of another living being exhaling all the air out of his lungs in one breath, very close to him

He’s suspended in mid-air and it’s a very strange sensation to say the least. But it’s still a hell lot better than the heart-stopping, terrifying consciousness of knowing he’s falling to certain death, mere seconds ago. 

Opening his eyes warily, there’s Sam’s head floating above his, wearing a pair of black goggles with tinted reflectors.

“Gotcha,” Sam says, sounding a little winded, over the boom of his jet powered wings and then, “you’re kinda heavy.” 

He’s being carried, one of Sam's arms under the crook of his knees and the other under his shoulders, like some fucking princess in distress yet again. He has the overwhelming instinct to thrash and struggle out of the humiliating position he’s in but that definitely would not be the best of ideas under the circumstance so he deliberately makes himself go limp instead.

“It’s the left arm. Made of metal alloy. Added..bulk,” he clarifies and this could possibly be the weirdest thing to happen to him yet, since leaving his little vault. Trying to explain about his weight to a flying breather who has saved him from being splattered messily as an exploding sack of skin, blood and bones on a stone pavement miles below while carrying him as they both dangle in the air.

Sam chuckles as he propels them back up to the top of the tower. “I was just kidding about the weight. We better get you back to Steve. I can hear him losing his mind from down here.” 

When they soar in through the same opening he fell from, Sam, after checking for a patch of floor relatively clear of broken shards of glass, releases his grip and drops him securely onto his feet. 

He’s muttering a self-conscious thanks to Sam, still mortified at being seen to be so defenseless and vulnerable, when Steve catches him from behind to enfold him into a firm hug. Follow by hands running up and down and everywhere they can reach upon his body and head, as if Steve is reassuring himself of B’s actual existence back here with him.

Steve isn't saying anything and when B turns around, the look his boyfriend is wearing on his face is indescribably exquisite and precious. So, if he ever needs validation of what he means to Steve again, all he needs to do is to be pushed or fall off a very high building. He’ll have to keep that in mind.

Sam mock grimaces as his mechanical wings fold in behind his back and he pulls his goggles up onto his forehead. “If you guys start making out right now, I am so leaving.” Taking a look at the completely blown side of the wall and the rest of the trashed apartment, he lets out a low whistle. “Stark’s doing? So where’s the man?”

“Yes,” Steve replies curtly, his gaze never leaving B’s, and that hard edge creeps into his voice as he mentions Tony. “There. Clint’s attending to him.”

“Ooookay.” Sam deftly maneuvers himself around the two, letting them have their moment. In a corner, half hidden by a smashed to pieces kitchenette counter, Clint is kneeling by a prone heap of red and gold armored legs and arms.

Sam hurries over and asks, “is he still breathing?” 

“He’s still alive, yeah. B punching his arc reactor must have knocked him out cold somehow or he was already low on energy. We have to get him out of the suit. He could be suffocating inside right this moment, for all we know.” In helpless frustration, Clint raps on the suit's breastplate with his knuckles, creating a hollow clang. “What a goddamn mess.”

“Check with the sneaky AI? He should know how to peel this off Stark, right?”

“Tried that. Jarvis isn’t responding.”

“Would getting a can opener be of any help?” 

After listening in to everything Sam and Clint are saying, B slings a hand around Steve’s neck and drags him in for a kiss, deep and full on the mouth. “Steve, I’m..not hurt, my body has not sustained any damage,” he tries to ease his boyfriend’s tension by saying after the kiss, and proceeds to twist out the python-like clutch Steve has him in. “Okay, something I have to..do.”

Walking over to where Stark has crashed, he looks down contemplatively at the human who wants to kill him, his crime being because he happens to be not quite a living human, and the loss of a beloved through an infected bite. 

The suit has lost whatever energy which powers it and the two narrow eye slits set high on the helmet are depressingly dark. Tony Stark resembles more of a broken puppet than anything else at this moment and there’s something unutterably sad and tragic contained within the insensible form of this man. 

Motioning for Clint and Sam to step away, he plants a foot in the middle of Stark’s chest. Reaching down with the arm Zola gave him, he grasps the edge of the mouthpiece with metal fingers to pull it up and rip it away. The faceplate resists briefly before there is the piercing, scraping sound of metal being torn off and Stark’s unconscious visage is gradually exposed beneath the jagged opening.

“And we didn’t even need that can opener,” Sam marvels.

Tony is breathing shallowly, closed eye sockets looking bruised and gaunt. Steve kneels and gives one stubbled cheek a few light slaps, with no discernible response. 

Clint grasps hold of Steve's hand briefly to stop the slaps and shakes his head warningly. “Don’t think that’s a good idea, Cap. If he wakes up, he might just decide to go for a second round again. This is the time for you and B to vamoose and get to Banner at the clinic.”

“What about Tony?” Steve wants to know.

“He’ll have to be sedated and kept under observation. It’s the only option we have. He’s in a bad place right now and dangling B in front of him isn’t going to help him recover his marbles back. Phil will have…oh fuck, Phil! Wilson, why isn't he with you? Where's my husband!?”

Perfectly on cue, the elevator door, somehow miraculously undamaged in the swath of destruction that has occurred, dings before sliding open to reveal a pale but standing Coulson stepping out from it. There’s a long cut, bleeding shallowly, on his forehead and he’s carrying a gun in one hand. Otherwise, Phil Coulson appears even more remarkably severe than usual and mightily pissed at the same time.


	10. Chapter 10

“Barton, report.” 

Even though his complexion is the color of chalk and blood is seeping from the cut on his head, Coulson still manages to request crisply as he surveys the room once he steps out of the elevator. He doesn’t so much walk as he strides, purposefully, over towards the Avengers and one partially undead, former HYDRA minion slash master assassin.

“Situation is under control. Stark is out of action for the time being.” 

Clint goes a little pale himself at the sight of the wound on Coulson’s forehead and he starts searching for something to clean the blood off in the wreck of the former kitchen. He can’t locate anything that’s clean enough and not covered by dust and rubble so Steve, noticing the unsuccessful hunt, reaches into his pocket and passes him a pristinely white handkerchief. 

“It’s nothing, Clint,” Coulson says calmly and covers Clint’s hand, dabbing the cut on his forehead, with his own hand and squeezes reassuringly. “Tony, he held back.” Clint’s fingers clenches firmly over Coulson’s briefly before they relax and he continues to clean the wound as best he can.

“He didn’t hold back for B. He almost did murder him.” The unconcealed angry intensity is Steve’s voice is blatant and causes everyone to cast quick looks at him, then at the still insensible Tony lying at their feet. Except for B who shrugs. 

“I was..under HYDRA, I murdered even more of your kind. And after I died, I ate them instead,” B says with brutal honesty. It’s a little non-sequitur, this admittance of his, but in a way he can understand Stark’s obsessive motivation to end any deadies he sees. If Steve is a normal breather and has been infected by a deadie…he might have walked the same path as Tony Stark. “Can’t blame Stark for wanting to throw me off his building, can I.”

Steve’s face tightens over what he has said. “You were taken and brainwashed by HYDRA. Eating people was the only way to survive for you as a zombie.”

“Doesn’t make me less guilty. Your SHIELD can sentence me..afterwards. Do you still have jails around?” he says, as mildly as he can, to his still tense and stressed over his near brush with absolute death boyfriend. He’s satisfied that Steve doesn’t think less of him for the things he has done but if he is becoming human again, he has to be held answerable for his actions when he had been one.

Steve appears to be struggling with the question of B’s culpability during his tenure as HYDRA’s leading assassin, choosing to remain silent for the time being, and so it is Coulson who considers B’s query with some gravity. “We don’t have prisons here, not any more. There isn’t enough manpower and resources to maintain them, I’m afraid. SHIELD has holding facilities for those who still persists in committing any law-breaking offenses at a time like this,” Coulson pauses. Then he asks inquiringly, “do you want to be incarcerated?”

“I’ve killed humans. Many of them. According to the file.”

At the mention of the file, Coulson throws Clint a reproving expression and his husband holds his hands up in apology.

“Barton, the file was for Level Ten and above clearance only. And that means myself and Fury so far.”

“I don't think Fury really gives a damn about levels right now, and Phil, he does have a right to know who he is,” Clint quickly explains his action. Coulson starts to nod slowly but the perpetrator also adds, “besides, don’t leave files on the bed when you take a shower if you don’t want me to take them.” 

“Clint…” Coulson exhales the name in a breath. Clint shuts his mouth and looks somewhat ashamed. He leans over and whispers something inaudible in Coulson’s ear, causing the man to suddenly smile reluctantly, like he could not help himself. The smile renders his rather normal features and formidable demeanor to undeniably handsome, warm and kind. It’s this moment, looking at that smile, that B can truly appreciate what Clint sees in this Phil Coulson.

Steve, who has remained quiet, speaks up now. “Director Coulson, I formally requests that B be tried for any crimes he thinks he has committed only after I bring him to Bruce. And only after Bruce has completely checked him out.”

Coulson raises an eyebrow. “Captain Rogers, there isn’t any working justice system as of this time, as you well know.”

“Regardless, if B thinks he should be tried, when a coherent system is back in place, he will be tried before a jury of his peers. Would that be enough for you? ” The last is directed at B who gives him a doubtful look. Somehow he has a feeling he has been bamboozled by Steve although his boyfriend is gazing back at him with what seem like apparent sincerity and all seriousness.

“Yes, it’s acceptable,” he replies, not wanting to make a big deal, for the time being. 

“Guys, leaving aside B’s guilt for now, not that I’m trivializing it but this isn’t the best place to be talking about it right now,” Sam is kneeling on one leg, over the red and gold figure. “I think he’s waking up.” Iron encased fingers starts to move and scramble lightly against the floor.

“I’ll take care of that.” Without missing a beat, Coulson takes out a taser from his pocket with the hand that isn’t holding the gun, switches it on and presses it against the revealed edge of Tony’s neck beneath the suit. Tony gives a rapid little jerk before flopping still again and Coulson doesn’t quite have an expression of satisfied payback on his face. “It’s not on full voltage and he’ll be out cold for another few hours at most. Get him down to the lab, and keep him sedated until the Captain and Sergeant Barnes arrive at the free clinic to meet with Dr Banner.”

At the vocalization of his human name, B gives a small twitch. It’s strange, almost surreal, to be named thus. Even if it has been proven indubitably he is this person. He’s unsure if he wants to be James Barnes yet. 

“With regards to standing trial for your crimes, that would have to wait until the situation at present resolves itself and the government rebuilds, if it rebuilds. Even if that happens, I believe there are sufficient mitigating circumstances that would negate any chances of prison.” Coulson unexpectedly extends a hand out at B, only this time he knows what to do. He folds his fingers over Coulson’s hand firmly and there is sympathy, heartfelt candor and respect in every word that comes next. “Welcome home, Sergeant Barnes.” 

B definitely can see what Clint sees in Phil Coulson now. He holds the hand and it’s the first time, other than previous contacts with Steve that he can feel another human’s warmness so simply, seeping through the skin of his flesh palm. 

At his side, Steve places a hand on his shoulder, signaling it’s time to leave.

Meanwhile, Sam has grabbed one of Tony’s arms while Clint takes the other and together they hoist him upright. Tony’s head lolls upon his chest but he stays unconscious.

“What about Jarvis? Isn’t he going to be on Tony’s side?” Clint asks.

In reply, Coulson hold up a small, black thumb-drive. “Taken care of. Temporary measure but I’ve shut down his main system core. Right after SHIELD discovered Stark has been hacking into our files, I got someone on my former team to design a modified kill switch just for this purpose one day. The agent who designed it, she was one of the best we had. Jarvis is still monitoring the coast lines but that’s all he can do for the moment.

“I knew there was a reason I married you,” Clint says, grinning broadly.

“Right,” Coulson says briskly, “We’ll handle Stark here. Get yourselves down to the clinic and report back once Banner has any findings.”

“Got it.” Steve nods. “We’ll be heading into civilian territory outside the Tower so B, you have to be careful. And you'll need something first, wait a minute.” Steve hastily exits the living area into an adjoining door that leads into the bedroom. 

“We’ll go on down and secure Tony for the time being. Good luck and tell Bruce we’ll like to remember what he looks like sometimes,” Clint says as he, Sam and Coulson, with Stark in tow, goes inside the lift. Sam throws him an encouraging salute with a free hand as the lift doors shut. Except for Tony Stark who admittedly has a rather large problem with deadies, he can’t help but be slightly amazed at how quickly the rest of the Avengers has accepted his presence among them. Even if he is Steve’s boyfriend, either it’s because he potentially holds a cure to the virus or because they are really laidback type of folks, he can only speculate.

When Steve comes out of the bedroom, he’s carrying a piece of clothing in a hand and a pair of boots in the other. He puts the boots down on the floor and tosses the clothing to B. It’s warm, soft and red and it’s a warm, red soft hoodie. He loves it already. Quickly shucking the sweater he’s wearing, he thrusts his arms through the sleeves and over his head. He draws the hood up so that it shadows his face and inserts his metal fingers into a pocket to hide it from open view. “How do I look?”

“Be alive.” Steve’s laughing as he says it, reminding of the first time they’ve met and what he had said, and he smirks back in shared remembrance. “Don’t forget the shoes.”

The outside of the Tower is relatively clear of humans when he walks out of the building entrance. Not that many people come around here, they stay around the outlying areas from the heart of the Tower, Steve explains to him. The devastation wrought by previous zombie infestations gets more obvious as they walk rapidly, down main streets and side ones, with Steve leading the way. There’s broken windows and boarded up doors and gates, signs of fire and blackened walls and vehicles that has been left abandoned on empty roads. But there are also signs of reconstruction and rebuilding, efforts to clean up and rein in the past damage and wreckage. Gardens planted with vegetables wherever there is available soil and debris brushed to the side. Laundry hanging out of any place that is used for shelter. Small indications of civilization trying its best to continue on. 

And then, there are the humans. Admittedly, not a lot, and all who are on the streets look focused as they go about their business or chores. Some recognize Steve as the two walk past and they would wave or call out a greeting to Captain America. Steve always smiles back and says a hello, without breaking his stride. Walking by his side, B’s shoulders start to hunch in deeper, letting the hood hide as much as it can, from scrutiny.

The deadie still inside of him is awake with a vengeance at the sight of more humans gathered in a single location than it has ever seen in its undead life. Like a starving wolf, it scrabbles and claws at the edge of his mind, howling to be set free. There, an innocuous breather, who has just nodded acknowledgement at Steve, B wants to bite into the side of his neck, tear out tendons, sinews, and guzzle blood down his throat. He can almost imagine doing just that, droplets of blood falling onto Steve’s horrified face as he does it. He wants to _feed_. His fingers tremble inside the hoodie pockets as they summon up the sensation of soft flesh ripping apart underneath their strength and he clenches them into fists.

His terseness at trying to control the deadie communicates itself to Steve. “What’s wrong?”

“How much further to this Banner of yours.”

“Just ahead, it’s a few more blocks. B, tell me what’s the matter.”

He refuses to reply, shaking his head in denial. He won’t ever feed again on humans. But it’s taking all of his strength to keep the impulse at bay, to lock the deadie in and not let it out.

“Just hurry.” Inside, he’ll be safe indoors without humans around. And they’ll be safer without him outside. 

He’s wrong. The clinic, when they arrive, is brimming with at least thirty or so humans, patiently waiting for their turn to see the volunteer doctors and there are small children and worried parents. The smell of disinfectant is strong as is sickness and disease lying underneath the sharp tang. And they’re all inside a confined area, with only one door out, his undead portion tells him. They won’t be able to escape effectively.

The clinic is housed in a section of a former hospital and Steve immediately goes up to a woman behind a counter with wire rimmed glasses who appears tired and terribly efficient at the same time.

“Mary,” he calls her, “is Dr Banner here?”

“Oh hey, Captain Rogers, good to see you again.” Mary smiles, wrinkles around her eyes deepening. “Dr Banner is indeed here. He’s attending to a patient at the moment. I’ll let him know you’re here once he’s available?” Her gaze goes pass Steve to peer at B, standing behind and still hunched in, like a spectre of impending doom. “Is your friend sick? I have to register him to see the doctor, it’s procedure.”

“What? Oh, no, he’s not sick. We just need to talk to Bruce. Is there somewhere we can wait for him?” Steve says hurriedly, stepping in front to hide B from her curious view. 

“Sure thing. Consultation Room Ten isn’t being used now. Just go down the corridor and turn right.” A harassed looking woman with a small child crying and sniffling in her arms comes up. One of the child’s flailing arms hits B's shoulder and he flinches away from the accidental touch. 

The woman hangs back slightly but her desire to speak with the nurse is obvious. Mary half-turns towards her but before her focus changes, she tells Steve, “By the way, please do tell Dr Banner to go home once his shift is over, he’s been here for the last four days. We’re short on physicians but we still can manage without him while he gets some sleep.”

B already has moved down the hallway, as swiftly as he can, away from all these humans and Steve is following behind him as he turns to Mary and assures her, “I’ll do that.”

Despite the smell of myriad illnesses in the air, the deadie is roaring to be released and do what it must. When B reaches the room marked with tarnished brass letterings that says 10, he almost takes the door off its hinges in his haste to open it and he rushes in to drop heavily onto a worn looking leather armchair at the side, next to the an examining table. He lowers his head and settles shaking hands between his legs to draw in thin breaths.

Steve kneels before him and pushes the hood off his head, hands stroking his face carefully. “Tell me.” It’s not a request but an order this time.

“Too many..humans around. The other..me, it wants to eat.” He doesn’t think he can ever fully articulate to someone who isn’t an undead, this all-consuming need to feed. It’s awful, repugnant, yet powerfully seductive and undeniable, the act of indulging it so pleasurable, and makes one so ashamed at the same time. Despite what Steve has said, that he has no choice, but it’s worse for him because he has retain awareness due to his body’s unique structure. Eating humans is cannibalism, pure and simple, at its most basic level. The majority of the undead, reverted to unthinking, mindless states akin to animals, they have an excuse. But not him. He knows this is why Nat refuses to return with them to her friends. She won’t do it until she has learnt how to control this urge, encoded into their very DNAs now, by the virus.

His fear and desperation shines through to Steve who has grasped his hands and holds them still with his own. 

“What can I do?” Steve asks, some of his calmness lending itself to B who sucks in another breath.

He can only think of one thing to overpower the deadie inside. “Fuck me.”

Steve goes very still. 

“Wrong..choice of words. I mean, you don’t have to fuck me exactly..just sex. Releases endorphins. Might help suppress the need.”

“B, you’re not thinking straight under the circumstances.”

He can smell a human who has just walked past outside the room, and he almost gives up the tenuous control and give in to rush out and plunge his fingers into an open mouth and tear it apart into two halves to locate the beautiful mass of brain hidden inside.

Cutting Steve off, he snarls, “You want me to kill humans again? Trust me..sex would be a better choice and you need an invitation? Please!” With a burst of strength, he grips Steve’s forearms and lifts them both up to their feet.

He kisses him hard, tongue pushing in belligerently, putting all his want in the contact. He doesn’t know if he’s doing it correctly, the way Steve did it before, but he thinks he should be on the right track when Steve utters a small groan. But it’s still not enough. 

He pulls out and off the kiss to unzip the hoodie and drag it off his arms to dump it on the chair behind him, leaving his torso bare. Then he lifts his head and exposes the line of a neck to Steve.

“Bite me.” 

“What?” Steve has desire, lust, love and also, befuddlement, upon his face. But one hand rises and places itself on the side of B’s waist, and starts to caress up and down.

“Bite me, mark me, you did it..before. Do it again. Come on.” He moves to stand until their bodies are pressed tightly together, no inches possible between them, and a long buried instinct makes him bump his pelvis experimentally against Steve’s, making his boyfriend swallow an audible gasp back into his throat. 

The stifled gasp becoming a low growl instead, Steve tightens his grip on the side of the waist and puts the other one behind B’s head and jerks him forward roughly. Bending his head, he presses his open mouth to the same spot he had bitten before, and the bruise had already healed, and blunt teeth clamps down. Harder than he has previously and B feels skin break and tear as Steve’s teeth sinks in and there is hurt but also pleasure jolting like electricity through his nerves. The deadie shudders inside and is shocked by the show of strength and the howling dies down to a whine. His strategy to subdue his need to feed is working and the hunger subsides and retreats. 

He’s going to tell Steve that when the bite ends and the room spins abruptly and he finds himself lying on the examining table, the leather chilled against his back, and Steve is covering his chest and stomach with sucking kisses. He blinks up at the white ceiling and this is unexpected but not unwelcome so he lets Steve settle his weight on his and continue to pepper his skin with kisses.

One kiss turns into a trailing lick as Steve maps the line of a blue vein with the tip of his tongue from his clavicle to the point of his left nipple. The tongue doesn’t stop there and wraps around the nub before Steve’s lips closes around it. The nub is sucked, kissed and licked until it becomes numb from the sensations and B doesn’t realize it, that he’s giving out embarrassingly soft moans, until Steve pulls off and asks if he’s hurting him.

“No, I’m okay.” He lifts his head to gaze at Steve who has slid further down and is lying between his legs. He tugs Steve back up and urges him to lift up slightly so that there is space for him to reach with his hands to unbutton Steve’s shirt. There is a lovely, little indulgent smile around Steve’s lips as he undresses his boyfriend and he lifts his head up more, bumping noses briefly, before they’re kissing again. And while they’re doing that, Steve’s hands are going to his jeans and flicking his fly open and there’s a sense of deja-vu. But Steve is shoving the jeans down and off his legs this time, along with the boots, exposing him and he is so laid open as hands push and spread his thighs. Steve’s own fly is now opened and a very hard cock is pressed against his organ. While he is the one who has initiated this, he has no idea where it’s leading to or how it will end. 

“I won’t fuck you. Not here. Going to do it properly on a bed and take my time,” Steve promises as he nuzzles the underside of an ear. And he adds, “if that’s alright by you?”

”Okay,” he repeats again and hooks both arms behind Steve’s neck as the hips above him starts rolling and grinding. His own slack member twitches in assured interest and the hormones released by the interaction and overflowing his entire system is simultaneously too much and not enough. His breaths are mingling with Steve’s pants in heated swirls and…

…the door chooses to open at this juncture as a man, with a mop of pepper and salt colored hair and a weary face, steps in. He stops short at the sight of Captain America, lying with his shirt half off his shoulders, on top of a nude man with a metal arm. 

“Steve? Why are you having sex in my consultation room?” Bruce asks, puzzlement creasing his forehead and crinkling the tired eyes.


	11. Chapter 11

“Yes, right, continue, no, don’t continue anymore. I’ll just be outside then until you’re ready,” Bruce intones, as he carefully backs out of the room.

The intense shade of scarlet still persists stubbornly on Steve’s face even after Bruce has diplomatically withdrawn and shut the door behind him. The flush reaches all the way down the neck to the chest, turning skin a pale red, and B lifts his hand to touch the thin sheath that separates him from the blood flowing beneath. No matter that he has seen Steve blushing before; he still can’t help but be fascinated and affected by this one uncomplicated reaction, capable only by humans.

He places a kiss of his own on Steve’s collarbone and the heady flavor of light, salt-tinged perspiration bursts onto his tongue, almost unbearably exciting the taste-buds, and he licks a trail up to the earlobe. Steve articulates a sound of utter and complete desperation before lifting himself off B to jump off the examining table.

“Bruce’s right outside,” he hisses as he stands to re-adjust his shirt and pants hastily. “This wasn’t the way I wanted him to see you. Us.”

“He doesn’t like sex?” Part of B, now that the powerfully overwhelming appetite for humans has been quashed and beaten back for the time being, thinks it’s extremely funny and endearing that Steve can promise to fuck him through a bed mere moments ago and yet, manage to feel mortified and uncomfortable because his teammate has caught him grinding on top of another being. Captain America can and does have sex presumably but not in front of his fellow Avengers.

“I’m sure Bruce is fine with it and probably has had…dear Lord, I don’t want to know about Bruce and sex!” Steve flattens a hand over his eyes as if trying to block out any unwanted mental images. “It’s not like that but I guess I’m still old-fashioned that way. I firmly believe, very firmly, that the particular act of sex should be in private and behind a closed door preferably. And B, just get dressed, please.”

He smirks at Steve’s exasperation at his still unclothed state and something inside him is enjoying his boyfriend’s reaction on a purely fundamental level, he realizes. Is it a remnant of the breather, this James Barnes, of whom he used to be? If it is, then he should explore this recovering facet of his previous character traits before his death, before HYDRA, to the fullest and see where it leads to.

“Pass me the..jeans and hoodie?” he asks of Steve who compiles, picking up the items of clothing from the floor and shaking them out. When they’re being handed to him, he deliberately stretches slow and lazily upon the examining table, rolling his upper torso, and making sure that one leg slips to the floor so that he’s spread even more to Steve’s unobstructed view. His hand reaches down and two fingers pinch and roll the nipple that had been lovingly mistreated by Steve’s mouth.

He issues a moan, as low and throaty as he can manage it, although it’s not hard to do since the lingering tenderness both stings and electrifies his entire body.

“Stop that!” The clothes are thrown at him, smacking him in the chest, and he begins to snigger as the renewed arousal is glaringly obvious from Steve’s tone of voice and the bulge at the front of those pants. His boots are unceremoniously shoved towards him as well.

“You are such a punk,” Steve is complaining under his breath as B finally sits up, grinning madly, and starts dressing. When the snap of the jeans is fastened securely and the hoodie is zipped, the front of the hoodie collar is grabbed by Steve’s fists and he’s being hauled up to stare straight into his eyes, radiating equal measures of indulgent irritation and disgruntled lust at him.

“Later, when all this is over, you are going to get it. Getting it in _spades_.” At odds with the threat, Steve drops a light kiss onto the bridge of his nose, making him chuckle as he wraps his arms around Steve’s waist snugly. He likes it that laughter can come more naturally and easily to him now.

The door knocks this time and opens a sliver as Banner pokes his head around the frame with a degree of wariness.

“I can come back again?” he offers, his brows still furrowed, when he sees them standing closely together in an embrace. “But I got a call from Clint and he filled me in, more or less. And I’ll really like to find out more.”

“You can come in. B and I are…done,” Steve coughs, in an exceptionally fake manner that even B can discern how awkward it is.

The two Avengers’ gazes dart and skirt around each other when Banner enters the room, as they determinedly try their best to not look at each other dead on. B, less discomfited at being caught completely naked and making out, releases his hold on Steve to hop back onto the examining table using one hand and he takes a good, long stare at Bruce Banner.

The human is slightly stocky in stature, cheeks bristly after a few days’ of non-shaving, and he looks older in age than the rest of the Avengers. Or it’s just Bruce Banner appears more worried and tired than any of them, seemingly with the burden of trying to provide a solution to this catastrophic epidemic lying squarely upon his shoulders. His hair is shot with strands of grey but an almost boyish flop of fringe lying across the forehead helps to alleviate the careworn features. He’s wearing a rumpled purple shirt and darker green corduroy pants and while B doesn’t consider himself a critic of human sartorial choices but the color mishmash, vaguely out of the ordinary, somehow works for Banner.

Despite the evident weariness, Bruce Banner manages to give an impression of a scruffy teddy bear that is in need of some comforting and maybe, a few hugs. B finds himself kind of hoping there’s someone around who does that for the human.

“You must be James Barnes.” Banner seems to have decided that fixing his eyes on him is a safer bet instead of at Steve.

“Just B. That works for..me.”

“B it is. Clint did say you had been one of the dead. That you were infected with the virus and subsequently revived. But somehow, you’re not one of them anymore and at this time undergoing a kind of metamorphosis and showing signs of life again. Do you know why?”

He shrugs. “Why I’m here. You’re supposed..to find out.”

Banner’s mouth pulls back in a wry twist. “The vote of confidence is appreciated. I would like to run some tests and see if I can establish and isolate the root cause of what’s happening to you and why it’s happening. But my equipment is back in the lab, at the Tower. Which, I hear, I’m forbidden to bring B back at the moment to conduct these same tests.” He passes a sideways glance at Steve, loaded with unsaid meaning. But all he says is, “Tony?”

Steve nods brusquely. Banner exhales a stretched sigh. “What did he do?”

“He blew up my place and threw B off the Tower.”

Banner’s brow becomes even more creased. “And you survived the fall?” he questions B with surprise and some incredulity.

“Sam managed to catch him as he was falling,” Steve clarifies, as B tries not to recall the manner in which Sam had saved him. He’s appreciative, of course, of the rescue but not being able to defend himself against Stark's attack and then scooped up in mid-air like a princess after being flung out of a window isn’t something he’s exactly proud of. The hoodie that has previously been just nice and soft starts feeling a little warm and scratchy, and there’s a sensation happening throughout the upper portion of his head which he can’t quite pinpoint what it is exactly.

Both humans are looking at him strangely and he resists the urge to tell them to knock it off, and stares back at them. The weird, prickly and burning sensation intensifies.

“You’re blushing,” Bruce states and Steve reaches to place a palm over B’s right cheek and for once, Steve’s hand feels cooling rather than the usual heat he’s used to experiencing from their previous skin contacts with each other. He turns his face towards the flat of the palm, heedless that Banner is watching them both closely, with sharp interest and curiosity.

“Blushing is normally caused by emotional stress or psychological anxiety, by feelings such as embarrassment, discomfort or anger. Rage.” Bruce pauses momentarily, as if he is reminded of something disagreeable. He shakes his head quickly. “And it requires a reasonable circulation to activate vessels to open and blood to rush in to infuse the skin, turning it a shade of red. Which means the bone marrow would be regenerated enough by now to produce new blood over again and your heart to pump.”

“You’re the..doctor.”

Banner smiles dryly as he goes over to the desk and takes a stethoscope out from a drawer. “I’m really a nuclear physicist by trade. But I had taken a class in human anatomy when dinosaurs and not the dead walked the earth. So I do know where the heart is positioned at the very least. And would you mind if I listen to it?”

He shrugs again; after all, that’s what he’s here for. To maybe save the world and the dwindling human race, etcera, etcera, with this messed up body of his.

He remains seated and unzips the hoodie enough for Banner to place the icy disc of the diaphragm against his skin.

After a while, Bruce lowers the stethoscope. “The good news is your lungs are definitely working again, and so is your heart but it’s abnormally slow. It’s going at less than twenty beats a minute and a normal human male’s at his peak would roughly be around sixty to eighty. If you were fully alive, it’ll be a cause of concern. However, in your case, I think it’s attributed to the fact that you are still undergoing the changes in your system. If you are really becoming human again, the heart rate will most likely increase as well and Steve, could you kiss B again?”

“What?”

“Please kiss him. I just need to confirm a hunch.” Bruce lays the stethoscope back onto B’s chest. He asks B, “You alright with this?”

“Why not.” It’s just a kiss and Banner doesn’t come across as some kind of sick voyeur to him, his expression being entirely serious and concentrated as he re-adjusts the stethoscope to better listen to his heart. So he turns his face up towards Steve who’s staring at his teammate and then at him.

Slowly, Steve bends down from the side he's standing and does as Bruce has requested.

He can barely feel Steve’s lips; it’s a clumsy and tentative brush against his mouth. That suspected recovered fragment of James Barnes inside of him rears its head with wicked intent and so he raises his arms around Steve’s neck to yank him further down and mashes their lips together hard. Steve has to brace his hands on the examining table to steady himself and despite Bruce’s presence, he doesn't pull away and starts to respond involuntarily. He does breath "you punk" into B's mouth and he grins into the kiss. But like all kisses with Steve, it's so good and their tongues swipe and caress in unison until Bruce speaks up.

“Ah, yes, thank you. That’ll do. You can stop now. Uh, stop now?” After when Steve and B moves apart, both breathing hard, Bruce stays motionless for the next few minutes or so, listening intently to B’s heartbeats.

Steve finally asks, “So what can you tell us?”

The scientist's response is to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Steve, right now, the stethoscope you see in my hand is the only thing I have. The clinic has some equipment I can use for some rudimentary testing but anything else on a molecular scale, I need the lab. Clint will keep us posted when Tony’s fully secured at the Tower. In the meantime, if I may, I’ll like to get a sample of B’s blood.”

When the needle of the syringe pierces his skin, the ensuing liquid that rushes and fills the tube is a thick, murky red. The bluish tinge, characteristic of whatever passes for blood inside a deadie, is still persistent but much fainter then before and it is more like a breather’s in the color and consistency than he had expected. He watches as Bruce re-injects the blood, his blood, into a test-tube and stoppers it.

“This hospital used to have a research facility although it’s been defunct for years and whatever’s left remaining is probably destroyed or stone-age. But they should have a usable microscope somewhere still. I'll get it later. Meantime, B, I have some questions. Do you know when you,” Bruce does a strange, wriggling motion with all of his ten fingers here, indicating to his chest area, “er, started feeling you were coming alive again?”

“Yes,” he answers readily since the meeting is still fresh and vividly rich for him. He doesn’t think he’ll forget this one strand of precious memory even if his former masters should return and swab his brain clean again. So he recounts the morning when Nat roused him to go out and feed. Seeing Sam and following him. Where, in a narrow alleyway, he first laid eyes on a tall, blond breather fighting for his life against an inexorable tide of deadies.

“When I..saved Steve’s ass from being eaten by a bunch of deadies. The organ, this heart, it..moved inside me," he finishes.

“That’s quite extraordinary.” Banner looks intrigued throughout B’s narrative and something sparks behind those rather mournful eyes. “A zombie, for a better word, possesses only one over-riding emotion that fuels their entire existence. Humans are usually indistinguishable to them, except as subsistence. We attempted all and every form of communication with them before but with no success. All higher brain functions are virtually extinguished after turning. Hunger for human flesh is the only thing they seem to recognize enough to remember.”

“No, that's not..right. The dead, they feed because..it’s the only thing left that gives them something to feel.” It doesn’t matter why they feed, but B just wants Banner to know why the dead are driven to do it.

“We never considered that possibility behind the hunger,” Banner mutters to himself, as he views B with undisguised fascination. “So why’s Steve different from the rest of us, for you?”

“He’s beautiful. And he damn well can..fight. Plus he smells delicious all the time but funny, it doesn't make me want to feed on him. He has to be protected. I have to keep him safe and..uneaten.”

Steve gives another one of those phony coughs although B doesn’t know why he would be self-conscious by the information he has revealed. It’s just the truth of the matter. Everything that has happened, until this moment, it started on that day when he stumbled across a breather fighting to keep his meat intact on his bones, surrounded by the decomposing dead, and he just knew he had to look after him. Because it has always been Steve.

“And how did this attachment to Steve progress after you saved him?”

“We danced on a roof to Billie Holiday..kissed a few times. He cooked me eggs. And he bit me and he’ll fuck me real slow, but it has to be on a bed. Don’t ask me why. He told me that, before you..interrupted us.”

“B!”

“Mmmm.” Any discomfort or embarrassment at having seen Steve and B making out has vanished and what’s in its place is the scientist as Banner ponders. “Judging by the prior scenario between you and Steve, there is obvious full body contact, but there has not been penetrative intercourse yet. Still, there is a distinct connection through mutual enzymes exchanged through saliva via the action of kissing...” Bruce trails off as he taps a finger against his pursed mouth thoughtfully. “Can I verify if French kissing is a common occurrence between the both of you?”

B asks interestedly before Steve can reply anything, “What’s French kissing?”

“A kiss involving tongues either touching the lips or the interior of the mouths of the parties concerned. Like just now.”

“Oh yeah, pretty..much done that with Steve. A lot.”

Steve’s perturbed face is redder than anything B has seen yet, when he confirms what Banner has asked. “Bruce, please, for the love of God, enlighten me on how is pursuing the manner in which I kiss B helping you to understand his situation or even finding an antibody for the virus?”

“I don’t know yet but I have a…well, call it an idea.”

“Through whether asking if B and I have been French kissing or if we had intercourse?” Steve starts out evenly enough but wavers towards the end, finally stumbling over the last word. B sits patiently to hear out Banner, chin propping on one hand that's resting on a knee.

“I did say it was an idea but it’s more of a hypothesis really. In any case, it’s shaky with no logical foundation behind it,” Banner admits freely.

Steve takes in a deep inhalation. “And would you care to share your illogical hypothesis with the rest of us?” he asks levelly.

“Something that Carl Jung once said. The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances. If there is any reaction, both are transformed. And from what I know so far, it’s confirmed B has a definite reaction to you and only towards you, so therefore, he is transforming.”

There is absolute silence as Steve absorbs Banner’s words. Then, “Bruce, are you trying to say B is coming alive again because of _me_?”

“Yes, there's a very high chance his metamorphosis could be a result of your continued proximity to him and his reciprocal responsiveness to it.”

“How is that even possible? The dead don’t revert back to life because of, what, kisses?”

Bruce holds up his hands, palms spread and out. “It's not just that. Your continued interactions with him, that you've been staying so close to B for the last few weeks are likely factors in his change. But that you're actively engaging in kissing helps. Steve, your body biology underwent a major change when you took Erskin's serum and with B's own version inside him, the two serums might have combined to produce something entirely new. The exchange, mingling of your saliva with B’s during the act of kissing and the subsequent ingestion of this new compound by him could have done something to his own biology, may even have accelerated the process."

He grimaces slightly at Banner's choice of words for something that has sent such pleasing and perfect tingles down his spine, and the scientist cracks an apologetic half-smile in return.

“When the two of you were engaging in the kiss, there was a rise in B’s heart-rate and while that can be attributed to the excitement and inevitable arousal from the act itself, B’s heart-rate was around thirty-five a minute, significantly more than the reading I took earlier on. It did drop but stayed at a balanced thirty after you finished. It will increase incrementally the more you are near him with prolonged interactions.”

Appearing as if an unexpected, splitting headache has descended on him, Steve insists, “It just can’t be that simple.”

“And it isn't. I believe the serum given to B doesn't just give him the capability to retain vocalization and thinking abilities after he turned. It’s most likely why he’s able to return from a deceased state to alive once more. Without the serum to begin with, the chemical regeneration plus the combination of your enzymes with his, in all probability, would not be achievable even if he has you as the reagent to kick-start the process."

Banner slowly nods like it's all coming together for him, as he continues talking. “Then there's the human chemical reaction theory. Heard of it? A change occurs in which one or more human molecules or human molecular compounds form or rather, chemically transform into a new compound, through a process of either synthesis coming together. So, just perhaps, the dead cells in B and the lifeless organs started to restore and revive themselves because he met one Steve Rogers who was the catalyst for him to do so.”

"If you are right about this, then it would mean..." Steve rubs a hand across his mouth consideringly, and his whole countenance is troubled as it goes from the scientist to B.

Throughout the explanations for his turning back to life, B has chosen to remain quiet, showing or betraying no shock at the theory that Steve is the trigger behind it. It really is that simple to him despite Banner saying otherwise. It has always been Steve; he knows this, deep and irrefutable within him. That Steve is distressed over the revelation is what makes him uneasy now. He doesn’t get it so he goes straight to the matter and asks directly. “Steve, why’re you upset?”

But it’s Banner who answers, with gentleness and some regret. “Because it means you are unique in this sole, entire world, B. And if I’m correct about my hypothesis, it also means there isn’t a viable cure we can derive from--"

A shrill scream, long and terror-filled, erupts outside the room to cut him off.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took longer than usual, sorry about that! But the end is near... 
> 
> The movie never really explained why R and the other zombies are coming back to life although it's hinted it's due to R's love for Julie and the rest are affected by it somehow. I tried to give a slightly more pseudo-sciencey explanation for B's own signs of life, the serum is always handy, but really, it's just because of kisses :)


	12. Chapter 12

Bruce, nearest to the door, has already flung it open and is out the corridor, his footsteps pelting a staccato of urgency.

“You stay here,” Steve doesn’t quite order, striding across the threshold of the room and B cannot think of a reason for him to stay behind, not after Banner’s interrupted declaration. He fixes his eyes on the test-tube of his blood, still lying on the surface of the desk, at the fluid that Steve had pinned so much of his hopes on, to bring back the world he had known before the virus destroyed everything.

“You don’t have to look after me. There isn’t..a cure.” Banner didn’t finish what he was going to say but enough was said for him to know he’s a waste of time. The cure that is wanted and needed so badly is not to be found inside him. “I’m no use to..you anymore, yeah?”

That catches Steve dead in his tracks. He pauses at the doorway and looks back.

“What are you talking about, that’s not—”

There are more panicked screams and shouts coming with greater clarity and frequency, and Steve breaks off, torn between finding out what the hell is going on outside or confronting what B has said. But he is spared the chance to choose because underneath the panicked noise being created by breathers, B can hear something else, something much more familiar to him in recent years…it’s so recognizable and it brings him back to a dark, little vault and pavements infested with the risen dead.

It’s the unmistakable reverberation of living flesh being torn by a multitude of teeth.

Without waiting further, he darts and pushes past Steve and he’s running out the long hospital corridor to where they first entered that waiting area with all the unwell and sick breathers.

“B!”

Ignoring the call because Steve will surely follow him and after a second, his boyfriend does just that.

He can smell it already, the sharp, coppery tang of thick blood, as they approach the revolving doors of the waiting area. Steve is looking grimmer and grimmer and with a sickening lurch, he knows what will be before them as they burst through to the main part of the clinic. As expected, it’s unholy chaos and carnage laid out before their eyes. Most of the sick patients have turned and those who haven’t are either being devoured or in the midst of being forced into corners by what used to be their fellow human beings as they try desperately to defend themselves.

He sees at least three of them pull a squealing breather who’s not able to escape fast enough down with them. A hand appears within the midst of crouching figures, clawing up into air, before a deadie snatches it to bite on the forearm and tear a gobbet out, stuffing the meat into its mouth with insatiable eagerness.

Not wasting time, Steve starts to move towards the ill-fated creature at present being eaten alive underneath a moving and rolling pile of animated corpses but B stops him by grabbing his arm.

“Too late,” he warns with terse brevity, “help those who are still breathing.” A former patient lurches towards them, teeth clacking insanely. It comes towards him, faster than any deadie he has seen before, and he punches against the side of its head with his metal arm. The living corpse staggers with its head sunken in on the right side now, a chunk of brain exposed. Despite the devastating impact of the blow, it still manages to pivot its broken, incomplete head in a distressingly humanlike gesture. Then it straightens, those dead white eyes reflecting a cavernous hunger within the milky irises, and it shambles hastily at B once more.

When the deadie is close enough, B places his hands on both sides of the head, ignoring the teeth that latch on instantly to his flesh arm since he’s protected by his thick sleeve, and he gives a swift and vicious twist. There is the audible sound of bone cracking and the deadie drops in a heap onto the floor and it stays there.

There’s something very wrong. “They’re different.”

“I noticed. They’re more responsive, stronger and it’s harder to bring them down.” Another one is trying to get at Steve, and he drives an elbow into a slavering face, caving its nose in along with one cheek cavity and eyeball, as he replies B.

“I think we..have better help Banner.” He points to the scientist who is holding a chair aloft and swinging it wildly with no coordination whatsoever at several deadies gathered around him. Behind Banner huddles a few living, non-infected breathers, backed against the nurses’ station. “He’s turning..green?”

He’s not certain what he’s seeing is some kind of illusion but even as Banner’s skin is becoming the deepening shade of a pea, he’s also growing larger. The seams of his shirt are splitting and his calves are bulging out tightly against the material of his pants. It’s uncanny to witness his transformation process which is rather saying something since they’re presently in a roomful of dead who are faster and tougher than any of their predecessors B has known before.

Steve at once yells out, his voice carrying piercingly across the expanse of the waiting room, and it works to effectively draw the undivided attention of every dead person in the room towards him and B.

“Bruce, you can’t change inside an enclosed space with civilians!”

A portion of the dead leaves off trying their best to tear Banner to pieces, attracted by Steve’s call, moving with deadly intent at them instead. Using the reprieve, Banner knocks the remaining zombies away with the chair. One falls to the ground and he bashes its head in with the same chair until it splinters and breaks apart. Two of the survivors he is protecting move out from behind him and one of them is the nurse, Mary, and she grabs hold of the nearest potential weapon to her which turns out to be a dirty broom that has seen better days.

Using it, she and another woman ram the blunt end as hard as they can at the deadie. The handle pierces the chest and they pin it against a nearby wall like a bug on a board. Limbs flail frantically as Bruce swiftly dispatches it by slamming a fist into its face and a messy explosion of meat and blood and bone ensues.

When the job’s done, the scientist pants, “I’m fine, I’m fine. I’m not changing,” repeating a litany to himself, as the greenness recedes and his bulk swells back down to normality. “Not changing.”

At the same time, Steve’s shout has drawn the zombies in the room and as a single collective entity, they converge in a lumbering mass to where he and B are, hands outspread, faces drawn into a rictus of senseless want and need. There are at least twenty of them, by B’s rapid count.

Taking advantage of the attention lull from the survivors and spying another exit in the room that’s cleared of any dead, Steve waves his hand gesticulating towards that direction to Banner. “Get them out of here!” The scientist nods his understanding and, as quietly as he can, he herds whoever is left from the carnage out the nearby door, leaving only the two men and a whole lot of walking dead behind.

“We can’t let any of them escape.” There is regret and misery in Steve’s tone as he faces the oncoming pack but he only knows too well the destruction the virus will wreak if it’s let out among the outside once more. B wishes he could take away Steve’s responsibility of having to destroy his fellow humans but there isn’t a way out of this that he can see, now that there isn’t a cure to be found from his blood.

No further words required, they stand back to back and begin.

This new breed of the dead is indeed stronger, sturdier, and having just turned, their bodies are fresh without the added debilitation of rot setting in to slow them down. Despite Steve’s enhanced strength and his own, it takes them a while to get to them all. Snapping the cervical vertebrae turns out to be the best method and while it’s brutal and they have to get close to the deadie in question to succeed, but it works in keeping them down.

Suddenly, he feels the entire line of Steve’s back stiffening against his and a glance around shows him why. It’s the female who had waited in line to speak with the nurse when they first came to the clinic and her features are twisted involuntarily with bottomless hunger and unthinking craving as she grasps for Steve. Her baby is nowhere to be seen and B hopes the child has been spared the mother’s fate or worse.

But Steve is faltering momentarily and the female takes the opening to grab him in a secure embrace, her arms going around his shoulders and she drags him towards her to bite into his neck before he can push her away.

He roars something, Steve’s name, or it’s just a wordless articulation of his horror but his boyfriend has by now torn her arms off him, and there’s no hesitation this time when he slams his palm against the underside of her chin. The female grunts, a soft mouthful of air, as her neck shatters and she slithers to the floor.

There’s no time to see to Steve’s injury as there are more remaining dead still gathered around them but B tears through most of them as quickly as he can, uncaring of his own safety. When he releases the last one to let it fall to his feet, its limbs twitching slightly before finally falling still, there are numerous bodies heaped around them.

He turns to Steve who is standing mutely, blue eyes remote and distant, clenched hands stained with the blood of those he has just been forced to kill in order to save others, and there it is, the damning indentation of teeth marks, burrowed deep into broken skin, on the left side of his neck.

Why does this feel it’s his fault, his blunder, his awful mistake to, for even a second, think he actually could be of use for once instead of being an experiment for Zola to play with, a brain damaged tool for HYDRA to wield as they like and, apparently, he’s also a waste of time for Steve. What use is he if he’s the only one coming alive, now that Steve is infected and will be very dead very soon?

“Steve…Steve…” he stupidly repeats his boyfriend’s name as his fingers tremble around the edges of the bite, not knowing what to do, what to say. Steve reaches up to grasp one hand in his, leaning in. The other hand goes around to the back of his head and he presses their foreheads tightly together.

“Guess we’ll know soon enough if I’m going to be one of them or like you. But there’s Natasha Romanov, so we have a third option available,” Steve says softly, and there’s no blame or fear reflected in his voice, only a calm certainty and acceptance.

But Steve won’t be like him or Nat. The serum inside him will help to impede the full turning process, but it won’t suppress the hunger and if he succumbs to feed on human flesh, he will never be the same. Steve is too good, too untainted, to ever be able to forgive himself for this transgression when it happens. And it will come to pass, once he turns, because the need to feed is too strong, too controlling even for the best. It will consume Steve completely and he will be damaged and he doesn’t want Steve to have to bear this horrifying burden.

Likely guessing what’s going through his mind, Steve bumps their foreheads gently, once. “Hey, don’t look like that. You’re becoming alive again so maybe, I can do it too. You can be my catalyst.”

“If that isn’t the weirdest declaration of true love, then I don’t know what is. What does that even mean, you can be my catalyst?” Barton asks as he ambles in through the main doors and he’s in his Hawkeye combat outfit, bow in one hand, and the quiver strapped to his back is filled with black fletched arrows.

Betraying no apparent surprise at the arrival, Steve just huffs a sigh and releases his grip on B to address his teammate. “Clint, we have, we _had_ , a new outbreak but it’s under control. For now. But the survivors need to be quarantined for the time being until they’re completely cleared. Can you get Coulson on the line?”

“Already done. SHIELD personnel are on the way to contain and sweep within two kilometers of the clinic. I scoped the immediate area before I came in and it doesn’t look like there’s any other infected beyond the ones inside the clinic.” Then, Clint adds, “except you, Cap. Sorry, we gotta take you in. Even if, like B, you won’t turn out to be a full-fledged brains eating zombie, the virus is in you now.”

“Put me in SHIELD headquarters. The isolation cells there still functional?”

“Yeah, they’re still working fine but--”

B interjects furiously, “There has to be another way!”

“We can’t risk having the contagion loose outside in the city again. Not even if the infected one is Captain America.” Clint’s professional mask drops and there is unhappiness evident for his fellow Avenger's predicament. “We have no choice and Steve knows it.”

Steve lays a hand on his shoulder. “B, it’ll be okay.”

“It won’t be okay! Steve, you just don’t get it, do you? It’s the hunger. You won’t be able to fight it. You’ll be able to think, and talk, but you still have to feed.”

“I’ve seen friends die, rise again to become one of the walking dead, and nothing gets through to them once they turn. Nothing can. And I know how the hunger affects you. So I do get it. But since I’m infected, I’m a danger to others and I won’t allow another epidemic to happen in this city again,” Steve pauses and he looks around at those he had to put down to safeguard others and his gaze falls upon that one woman who has transmitted the infection to him and B knows he’s thinking how, through his choice, a child somewhere is now orphaned.

“B, I’m not stupid enough to think I can stop myself if I turn, even though I have the serum as an advantage over most people. That’s why I have to be isolated.”

“If you don’t eat, you’ll die,” B states plainly and there is such discomfort and the sensation of a hole widening his chest. It hurts; it’s his heart and it’s hurting so bad.

“It won’t come to that, I swear to you.”

There’s a small sound to the right and it’s Bruce who’s coming out of the other exit door. He’s alone, and when he sees the quantity of dead zombies littered and strewn across the room, he flushes jade green to some extent again but the tinge subsides as swiftly as it appears.

Telling Clint, he says, “I’ve secured the remaining survivors upstairs. I’ve checked and no one has been bitten. They’re clean but to be on the safe side, I recommend quarantine for at least a month.”

“Cap’s been bitten. He’s infected,” Clint grimaces, pointing to Steve’s ravaged neck.

“What?” Bruce’s skin goes a little emerald green again, “then why are we still standing around here for? We don’t have much time left! We already know the turning process varies from person to person, anything from an hour to a day, although in Steve’s case, the gestation period could be longer due to Erskine’s serum but we can’t take the chance. We have to administer the antibody as soon as possible.”

All three of them turn to gawk at the slightly pea-green appearing scientist. “But you said there’s no cure,” Steve protests.

“When did I say that?” Bruce’s confusion is clearly obvious.

“Right before the outbreak happened, inside the consultation room.”

“Wait, wait, what I said is that there isn’t any cure we can derive from B’s blood and that’s true, there just isn’t any likely treatment at this juncture. Most of the dead are too far gone for any cure to work. Not with the stages of decay and deterioration their physical bodies are in. However, it’s highly probable that, using B’s unique blood structure as the base, an antibody can be recreated to counteract the virus but only if it’s given before the infection completes its course.”

Clint slaps a hand over his forehead. “And you couldn’t say this sooner?”

“But I thought Steve and B knew already,” Bruce says, eyes going a little owlish with some surprise.

“So how do we get the antibody?” he asks, not wanting to waste another second. If Steve has a chance not to revive and be a deadie, he’ll do anything to protect this window and keep it open.

“We’ll need the lab back at the Tower for starters so that I can analyze your blood at a molecular level, and find out if an antivirus can be reproduced. And right, I’ll also need Tony, the results will be faster if I have his help.”

“Tony, as in Tony ‘I Will Annihilate All Zombies Dead or Alive’ Stark?” After a hushed silence by everyone present, Clint finally speaks up. “Tony who already tried to kill B a few times and almost succeeded? Bruce, you’re one of the most brilliant person I know, no denying it, but I’m having a great many doubts about your judgment at this moment.”

Banner rubs his face with a hand. “I’ll talk to him. He’ll listen to me.”

\-----

Stark is being kept in a large, circular compartment made of reinforced material that looks like glass but isn’t. He’s not wearing his suit right now, and his clothes are rumpled while he lies down, prone, on the floor, hands tucked under his head. But he is awake and defiantly not looking at Banner, who is standing millimeters away from the not-glass, urgently talking to him.

“It’s Steve, he’s our comrade, our friend, how can you stand by and do nothing when I tell you a workable antivirus is within our reach. If Steve is cured, anyone else who is bitten and hasn’t turned has a chance to revert back to normal. Tony, you’re better than this. I know you are,” Bruce is saying.

Stark draws his hands out from underneath his head and places them flat over each of his ears instead and he starts humming under his breath.

“Tony, if you can just stop being a momentous asshole for God’s sake and listen,” Bruce implores with frustration. He takes off his glasses and screws his eyes shut. After a while, he puts them on again with renewed determination.

The humming only becomes louder.

Standing a few meters away, B is considering breaking into that strengthened cell and then, breaking both of Stark’s legs. He can still help Banner find an antibody, even in a wheelchair, he’s sure.

He takes a step forward, intending to follow through on his plan, but Steve grips his shoulder firmly and pulls him back.

“Give Bruce time. And Tony. He’ll come around.”

“You don’t have the time to spare! If Stark continues being a prick, you’ll end up dead and turning. Then I’ll have to rip his spleen out through his back instead of breaking his legs.”

Steve actually laughs at this when he’s being absolutely serious. He scowls angrily in return, crossing his arms. And of course, Steve would then be using the pad of his thumb to gently brush against his lips, smoothing the frown away, the punk.

“By the way, with or without a cure or an antibody, you’ll still be the only reagent for me.”

It’s happening. This time he can actually feel his heart beating, a steady thump, thump, thump. His previous life wasn’t so great by all accounts, but with Steve around this time, maybe this second re-life won’t be so bad.

“Clint’s right, you really come up with the lamest pickup lines.”

“I do my best.” Steve’s leaning over to kiss him when he’s stopped by the sound of Clint’s voice coming through his communicator.

/ _Steve, I’ve talked to the clinic survivors. Most of them don’t know why the others in the room started turning. Only it happened fast and quick_ /

“Even if those in the room were already infected beforehand, it’s unheard of for a pack to turn almost simultaneously. Can the virus be mutating into a new strain? But why now?”

/ _Bruce’s nurse on duty, she remembers some guy coming into the clinic right before both of you. He stuck in her mind because he left five minutes without seeing any of the doctors. And he was badly disfigured_ /

“In what way?”

/ _His whole face was like something out of the House of Horrors. Burn scars all over. Mary noticed he had a military bearing, from the way he walked, so she thought he might have been an ex-veteran or soldier. Military, burn scars on the face and present at the right time and place. I’m somehow thinking of a helicarrier and one presumed dead but not risen SHIELD double-crosser. Ring any bells for you_ /

“Brock Rumlow. HYDRA.” Steve’s fingers tighten over the hard casing of the communicator and he glances at B who, at the mention of his former masters, goes still. “Natasha Romanov had said HYDRA is still around. But if they’re actually here, inside the city…”

/ _It’s not established yet if it was Rumlow or HYDRA’s behind this but there is one other thing. B’s blood is missing. It’s not there where you said Bruce left it. I looked all over the place. It’s most definitely gone/_

“This isn’t a coincidence, not with the outbreak happening right when B and I was in the clinic, and now the missing blood. It was a diversion and it worked. So let's start with Rumlow. Can you track down if any burn victims were admitted into a hospital after the helicarrier fell? You know the timeline.”

/ _Phil’s already on it. He’ll let us know if anything comes up on the grid. In the meantime, any luck with Tony/_

“Bruce’s still trying.”

At that moment, Banner says something that finally breaks through Stark’s armor of seeming disinterest and indifference. Whatever was said causes him to surge to his feet, features distorted with intense passion and hatred.

“They killed Pepper!” he’s shouting, as he slams his fists up against the transparent, unyielding wall and then gestures to B accusingly. “Pepper wouldn’t have died if it wasn’t because of those things!”

“No, Tony,” Bruce shakes his head emphatically, eyes bleak but strangely understanding at the same time. “You put a gun to her head. You pulled the trigger to put a bullet inside her brain. You were afraid of what she was becoming. You let your fear overcome your love for her. The dead didn’t kill Pepper. You killed Pepper.”

Stark flinches visibly, gasping as if each word hits him like a physical blow, the rage on his attractive face gradually leaching away to be replaced by a horrified realization and growing dismay when Bruce ends.

He slides down slowly and sits, cross legged, to lean his forehead against the glass. He doesn’t sob or weep and his breaths come out harshly. B has the feeling it’s not in Stark’s nature to admit his mistakes and faults. But there’s something in his posture, the slump of the shoulders that plainly reveals the truth of Banner’s assertion of being the one to end his wife’s life, not the dead, has struck at the core of his lingering ferocity.

A few minutes pass before Stark lifts his head up and his lip has been gnawed on until blood is swelling up in scarlet beads. But his scrutiny, when he turns to look at Steve and B, is clear and sharp, unclouded by the previous antagonism lurking within the depths although some mistrust and doubt does still remain.

He sucks in another breath before the next words to come out of his mouth are, “So what do you need me to do?”

\-----

B will never get tired of kissing. Especially when his partner is Steve Rogers.

“You hungry? It’s almost dinnertime. I can cook you something,” his boyfriend murmurs, in between one of those prolonged, euphoric kisses that are making his lips go almost numb. “I managed to requisition some beef from Clint.” If Steve can still talk lucidly in lengthy, complete sentences, then he’s not doing it right.

So B tightens his arms around the other man's neck and proceeds to lay out a plan of attack which involves first nipping, then sucking a plump lower lip for close to a full minute until Steve releases a thick, rumbling groan. Phase two comprises of a teasing interplay of his tongue against Steve’s, sometimes withdrawing after just touching briefly, letting Steve chase him into his own mouth. Phase three is to be combined along with phase two and he lets a hand slide underneath a shirt to start lightly scratching skin with blunt fingernails and slipping fingers to linger just above the clothed warmth.

It works beautifully and he’s very pleased when Steve draws away and snatches his hand out from his jeans where it has been palming the flat, smooth skin of a pelvis.

“No good?” he asks mildly.

“Too good and you know it,” Steve deadpans but the corner of his mouth is twitching up into a grin. “We’re on the airpad and I have no intentions of violating public decency, no matter how enticing the prospect is.”

“Then I have failed my mission. And Steve, we’re almost eighty floors above the ground, no one is going to see us. Except maybe Wilson, if he’s flying around.”

On cue, there’s the thrumming roar of a jet pack and Sam shoots up, meters away from the edge where the two of them are sitting and had been making out like a couple of teenagers. He waves at them with a wriggle of his fingers before swan-diving down the side of the Tower again.

“See?” Steve says with a vindicated expression as he waves back to his friend.

“Only because Wilson probably gets his rocks off by peeping at others,” B mutters under his breath.

After releasing Stark from his prison, he and Banner immediately holed up inside the lab for two days straight to try and isolate the enzyme in B's blood that allows him to revive from dead to alive. Once that was accomplished, an antibody was designed solely for Steve, taking into account his serum-enhanced physiology, and administered to him. Afterwards, it was down to a waiting game and Steve refused to let anyone near him, even B, putting himself inside the same prison Stark had been incarcerated in briefly.

B spent most of the following two weeks and two days, sitting and talking to Steve through the impenetrable wall of the prison, avoiding Stark, or reading up on whatever records pertaining to James Buchanan Barnes that Clint managed to dig up for him.

Today, Bruce finally ascertained Steve to be completely free of the virus and has remained one hundred percent human and will continue to be so unless he gets chomped on again by an infected. Stark and Banner proceeded to give each other a high five and then they disappeared back into the lab to continue to modify the antibody so that it’s effective for normal human composition as well.

So Steve had dragged B to the airpad of the Tower, declaring it to be the greatest spot to see a NYC sunset. And he’s right. The city looks incredible and unspoiled under the soft, indulgent golden rays of the disappearing sun over the horizon. B lies down on the stony surface and gazes up at the deepening violet-blue shade of a twilight sky, basking in the remaining heat emanating from the concrete. Steve continues sitting beside him and his fingers stretch to softly card through B’s hair.

Abruptly, Steve says, “HYDRA’s out there.”

“I know.”

“I won’t let them take you again.”

“Okay.”

It’s not happily ever after. Not when those who created the Winter Soldier have revealed their existence. Not when they have managed to mutate the virus to spawn faster deadies in a shorter period of time. The tube of his missing blood that was HYDRA's objective in the clinic, no one has any guesses what they will use it for. And Nat’s whereabouts are currently unknown. There are so many unanswered questions and the shambles of the world are still trying to piece themselves back together while the dead still walks.

But there’s a fragment of the puzzle that he has recovered and it’s as good as a time to tell Steve about it, he reckons.

“When I used to be a breather, the first time round, I was called Bucky by my friends.”

The fingers continue to stroke his hair and he sighs in contentment. “Bucky. That’s a good name. I like James too and B. But Bucky has a ring to it. I happen to know someone with that name actually, a long time…” he stops to lean over him, and filling his vision is Steve’s face and blue eyes that recall a vivid summertime sky for him. And those eyes are reflecting wonder and amazement at him right now.

“There was a boy. Back in the old neighborhood, when I was still a scrawny lick of a kid, and before the war. A group of bigger boys stole a watch from old man Levin’s pawnshop and they wouldn’t return it. Of course they were pounding the stuffing out of me and there was this kid who ran them off. Said he was visiting relatives or something like that and we were inseparable for a month until he went back home. Bucky…B, was that you?”

He doesn’t answer; just cups a hand behind Steve's neck to pull him down so it’s easier for them to kiss once more. He’ll never get tired of kissing and he wants to do it as often as he can with his boyfriend. His strongly beating heart leaps inside his chest in agreement.

He was born James Buchanan Barnes, bent and shaped into the Winter Soldier against his will and died as him, but he’s B now and he can live with that.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end. Unless there's a sequel, maybe, I don't know. There's HYDRA lurking around, creating stronger zombies for their nefarious purposes. What exactly do they want with B's blood plus Nat's still somewhere in the deadlands of DC. But for now, the fic is done. 
> 
> A big, big thank you to everyone who stuck with this despite the long intervals between updates! Your comments and kudos are lovely and I cherish every one of them.


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